the tourist 2022 review

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'The Tourist' doesn't know who he is — just that someone wants him dead

John Powers

In The Tourist, "The Man" (Jamie Dornan) wakes up in a small town hospital in the Australian outback with no idea who he is or how he got there. HBO hide caption

In The Tourist, "The Man" (Jamie Dornan) wakes up in a small town hospital in the Australian outback with no idea who he is or how he got there.

Ever since the birth of mass communications, our culture has been haunted by the idea of amnesia. In high-class books by the likes of George Orwell or Milan Kundera , forgetting becomes a political metaphor for the erasure of truth. Things are less ambitious in pop entertainments like Memento or the Jason Bourne series . There, memory-loss is less a metaphor than a motor — a gimmick to drive the story forward.

This motor purrs like a Ferrari in The Tourist , a hit BBC series playing on HBO Max. Written by the Williams brothers, Harry and Jack — best known here for The Missing and Baptiste — this funny, suspenseful six-part thriller doesn't merely keep us guessing. It keeps its amnesiac hero guessing, too. He knows even less about his own story than we do.

A bearded, muscled-up Jamie Dornan stars as a T-shirt clad Irishman who gets in a car accident and winds up in a small town hospital in the Australian outback. Known simply as "The Man," he doesn't know who he is or how he got there. But soon after he leaves the hospital, he knows one thing for sure: Somebody wants to kill him.

As he seeks to find out who's after him and why, he's helped by two very different women. Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin) is a waitress who we aren't quite sure what to make of. In contrast, it's easy to trust probationary constable Helen Chambers, played by Danielle Macdonald. Helen's a newbie cop who struggles with her weight and with a fiancé who speaks of her appearance with such passive-aggressive meanness that I kept hoping he'd become one of the show's murder victims.

While The Man's search for his identity is grippingly plotted, the show lets the action breathe. It takes time to enjoy his encounters with a wide range of oddball types, be it a goofy chess-playing pilot, a Greek mobster, the affably nutty woman who offers him lodging, or the enormous, cowboy-hatted hitman who has the self-satisfied theatricality of an escapee from a Tarantino movie. That said, The Man knows he must keep moving to stay alive.

For all The Tourist 's inventiveness — Episode 5 is a trip — it reminds us that even good pop culture is often derivative. The show's opening car crash sequence mimics the Steven Spielberg movie Duel . More importantly, the Williams brothers are pretty clearly doing a Down Under riff on Fargo . Their series offers the same blend of violence and barbed humor, the same mythologizing of bleak, underpopulated places, and the same cavalcade of viciousness and folly that brings out the heroism in an ordinary person.

The show's moral center is Helen, who, in Macdonald's sensational performance, has our sympathy from the get-go. Her work is so scene-stealingly good that I would call this a career-making performance if I hadn't already said this about Macdonald's electric work as an aspiring New Jersey rapper in the indie film Patti Cake$ .

Helen's transparent goodness makes her the perfect counterpoint to The Man, a handsome hunk who's a mystery, even to himself. It's a great role for Dornan, who, earlier in his career, had a slightly synthetic prettiness that made him ideal for creepy characters like the S&M billionaire in Fifty Shades of Grey . Here, he's a bit older, thicker, and rougher. And just as Brad Pitt often seems liberated when his good looks are masked a bit, Dornan gives his best performance as a man who isn't sure whether or not he's the hero of his own life.

Over the course of the six episodes, The Man struggles to learn whether, back before his accident, he was a good guy or a bad guy. And if he had been a villain, does he have to stay one, even after he starts remembering his past? I won't reveal what he discovers, though I feel obligated to say that you won't get a definitive answer this season. You'll have to watch Season 2 of The Tourist , not yet made, which I bet you will be more than happy to do.

The Tourist (2022–2024)

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‘The Tourist’ Thrills, but Doesn’t Take Itself Too Seriously

Even though the six-episode series, airing on HBO Max, is gripping and full of surprises, its creators made sure to include some offbeat humor.

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By Desiree Ibekwe

LONDON — After his car is rammed off the road by a mystery driver in a truck, a Northern Irishman wakes up in a hospital in the Australian outback with no memory of who he is. “I keep telling myself to just try and remember,” he tells the police officer that comes to take his statement, “but it’s like trying to make yourself fly.”

That is the starting gun for “The Tourist,” a six-part limited series that premieres Thursday on HBO Max. After the man, played by Jamie Dornan (“ Belfast ”), leaves the hospital, it becomes clear he was involved in some murky business in his former life, and someone definitely wants him dead.

The opening premise would suggest a typical thriller. Memory loss is a familiar plot device for the genre (see: “Memento,” “The Bourne Identity” et al). “The Tourist,” which first aired on the BBC in Britain this year, is similar in form to the broadcaster’s other tense, tight shows, such as “ The Night Manager ” and “ Bodyguard .”

Unlike those offerings, “The Tourist” adds more offbeat humor and touches of the surreal to a gripping central plot that still provides car chases, shootouts and international criminal outfits.

When he first read the script, Dornan found it surprising, he said in a recent interview. “Any time I thought it was one thing, or I had a handle on where it was heading, it was altered,” he said. “It was sometimes really subtle, and sometimes it was a big whack over the head.”

As the episodes unfurl, rooting for the confused, likable character becomes a little more complicated. In a recent interview, Dornan said that when he first read the script he wondered if the audience would still be on the man’s side, “searching for the answers when they find out what some of the answers are.”

Dornan’s character is joined in his hunt for answers by the police officer from the hospital, Helen Chambers ( Danielle Macdonald ), who is on her first assignment off traffic duty. She feels strangely compelled to help the man, who also finds assistance from Luci Miller (Shalom Brune-Franklin), a waitress he meets at a cafe.

The show’s setting in small-town Australia helps provide comic relief through characters like a hapless but well-meaning rookie police officer and the elderly owners of a bed-and-breakfast. Amid the chaos and danger, there are scenes that tip into the wholesome and heartwarming.

Helen, the police officer, is also an unlikely thriller protagonist: kind, honest and unassuming. Macdonald sees her character as the show’s “Everywoman,” she said in a recent interview. When we first meet Helen, it is clear that she is unhappy and underestimated, by herself and her fiancé.

Macdonald said that she had spent some time figuring out the character’s role in the plot. “The rest of the show is so dark and Helen was so light,” she said. “It ended up balancing really nicely.”

The show’s writers and creators, the brothers Jack and Harry Williams, have become known for conventional thrillers such as the Golden Globe-nominated show “ The Missing .” “The Tourist” came from a desire to do something different. “It’s the kind of show we’d watch, it’s the kind of show we really enjoy doing,” Jack said.

The brothers also have experience with dark-hearted television comedies, having been executive producers on Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “ Fleabag ” and on Daisy Haggard’s “ Back to Life .” Their latest show, then, was about “bridging that gap, because having made comedies and made drama, it just felt like a natural place for us to operate,” Harry Williams said.

They brought on Chris Sweeney, who also worked on “Back to Life,” to direct half of the series. Despite wanting to work on nondirectorial projects at the time, Sweeney said that he had been won over. “I don’t like straight thrillers, it’s not my thing, but I like things that use a device to talk about what is human existence in a playful way,” he said in a video interview.

“The Tourist” questions not only how the past defines us, but also — through the character trajectories of both the central character and of Helen — the other things we lean on to build our identities. Sweeney said that he felt the script had the “personality” of films he loves within the thriller genre, like the work of the Coen brothers. He described elements of the show as a “love letter” to those films, with scenes that evoke “ No Country for Old Men ” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight.”

Dornan was initially a little concerned about the show’s genre medley. While shooting in Australia, “the three of us, Shalom, Danielle and I, we were all in equal parts terrified at different moments because of the comedy and the drama, and how to find the comfortable line there,” he said. “I was a bit like, are people going to know what this is, or where to hang their hat on it?”

In Britain, at least, the concerns seem to have been unfounded. When “The Tourist” arrived on the BBC’s streaming service on New Year’s Day, it was met with glowing reviews and quickly became the platform’s third-most successful drama opening to date.

Jack Williams said he thought that the show had resonated with audiences, in part, because of its escapist quality, adding that it “isn’t trying to reflect back some of the angst and misery that everyone’s been experiencing for a few years.”

As well as diving into a mystery, viewers of “The Tourist” are transported to a stark, almost otherworldly landscape. The show was filmed across several different locations in the sprawling expanse of southern Australia, where you can “point the camera anywhere and it just looks incredible,” Harry Williams noted. “That said, we had to travel quite a lot of hours within the outback in order to get that desired effect,” he added.

The travel contributed to the shoot’s lasting five months, a period of filming that was also stretched by the ambition of the show: The opening car chase sequence was filmed over two weeks. “It was the hardest job I’ve ever done,” Dornan said. “It’s the longest job I’ve ever done.”

With the show’s success in Britain has come discussion about the possibility of a second season. The show was conceived as a self-contained mini-series, similar to the BBC’s other six-part shows. That “less is more” approach contrasts with the sprawling nature of much of American network television; Showtime’s thriller “Homeland,” for example, ran for eight seasons and 96 episodes.

Tommy Bulfin, a BBC drama commissioning editor, said in an email that, while the broadcaster has a “tradition of doing six episode runs,” ultimately the practice of doing shorter productions was down to the subject matter. “I think the key to the success of these shows is that they’re all excellent examples of brilliantly crafted stories,” he said.

The Williams brothers echoed that sentiment. In thinking about the length of “The Tourist,” the story took precedence. “You have to kind of follow that and the natural course that it would take and not try and squeeze out more,” Harry said. The pair wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a second season, but added that they were cautious about doing so.

“There is no perfect length, just like there’s no perfect length for a book,” Harry Williams said. “But there is an appropriate length for a story.”

Desiree Ibekwe is a news assistant on the Audio team. Before joining The Times in 2020, she was a reporter at Broadcast Magazine and completed a fellowship at The Economist.  More about Desiree Ibekwe

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Review: 'The Tourist' is a ferocious thriller that relentlessly keeps you hanging on

Talk about a binge watch!

Talk about a binge watch! “The Tourist,” on HBO Max in a blast of six, one-hour episodes, is a ferocious thriller that’s also ferociously funny. Starring Jamie Dornan as an Irishman suffering amnesia in the Australian outback, the series is—to recoin a phrase—must-see TV.

The plot kicks in hard in Episode 1 as Dornan drives down a dusty road with a monster truck on his tail. Waking up battered and bruised in a hospital, he can’t even remember his name. Known only as “The Man” until the end of Episode 2, The Man—like Guy Pearce in “Memento”— must put together the puzzle of his life with crucial pieces missing.

“The Tourist” relentlessly keeps you hanging on. In the book world, they’d call it unputdownable. Each episode of the script by Jack and Harry Williams (“The Missing”) ends in a cliffhanger that whips you into the next episode. Forget about sleep.

It’s clear that Chris Sweeney (who directed episodes one to three) and Daniel Nettheim (who helmed the other half) have seen a lot of Coen brothers movies, especially “Fargo” and “Raising Arizona” with their deliciously deadpan blend of mirth and menace. If you’re going to borrow inspiration, why not swipe from the best.

MORE: Review: 'Licorice Pizza' one of the best films of the year

And Dornan, free from the cartoonish excess of the “Fifty Shades of Gray” trilogy, carries the whole thing with his starshine and burgeoning talent as an actor in “The Fall” and “Belfast.” Dornan is so good, you’ll follow him anywhere, which is just what “The Tourist” needs.

Dornan finds a perfect partner in Aussie dynamo Danielle Macdonald as Helen Chambers, a traffic cop with ambitions to rise in the ranks. The sweetness of Macdonald’s funny, touching and vital performance brings a nurturing humanity to the evil-doings surrounding her.

Can the diet-obsessed Helen, stuck with a controlling fiancée (Greg Larsen), discover herself by helping The Man recover his memory? Their attraction, repped by a burrito emoji, brings heart to a series that aims to blow the doors off with shocks and exploding violence.

For instance, there’s the dude who keeps calling The Man while buried alive in a secret grave? And why does the detective inspector, played to the hilt by Damon Herriman, seem less reliable than the gangsters and drug dealers who occupy the periphery of the episodes?

MORE: Review: 'The Tender Bar' deals a winning hand

Truly terrifying is the best way to describe Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as Billy, the hulking American cowboy who drove The Man off the road and yet keeps comparing everyone he meets to his beloved mother. The scene between Billy and Helen will have you biting your nails to the quick.

And what of Shalom Brune-Franklin (“Line of Duty”) as Luci, the flirt who meets The Man at a diner that explodes minutes after they leave it. Luci volunteers to help The Man chase down his past. Or is she hiding something. Hint: Everyone in “The Tourist” is hiding something.

There’s no way I’ll spoil the fun by telling you who’s hiding what. Packed with high-voltage suspense and twists you don’t see coming, “The Tourist” also poses tangled questions about the nature of identify. You can tell The Man is afraid of what he might learn about himself.

Put yourself in his place, which is exactly what “The Tourist” wants you do. It’s one of the reasons this thrill-a-minute series has the staying power to haunt your dreams. The final episode is open-ended enough to suggest there might be a Season 2. Count me in.

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The Tourist series two review – Jamie Dornan is hugely charming in this gloriously fun show

This raucous, entertaining thriller is the perfect vehicle for the one-time Fifty Shades star. It’s twisty, funny and unfailingly engaging

W hen Fifty Shades of Grey arrived in cinemas in 2015, Dakota Johnson was its breakout star. She would delight the internet by going on to declare that her No 1 priority was sleeping , rhapsodising about limes and going viral with an awkward Ellen interview , while straddling indie darlings and the odd blockbuster to cement her A-list status.

But things have not been so smooth for her S&M trilogy co-star Jamie Dornan, who has largely been making forgettable action movies, failed awards bait and the utterly dire Wild Mountain Thyme . With the exception of Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and his chilling turn as a serial killer in The Fall (which was sullied by his admission that he stalked a woman to get into character), his legacy is on shakier ground.

Thankfully, Dornan’s excellent turn in 2022’s twisted BBC thriller The Tourist, which pivoted between nauseatingly tense, blackly comic and surprisingly sweet, turns out not to have been a fluke; its second season is just as joyous a rollercoaster. The first series introduced Dornan as Elliot Stanley, an amnesiac Irishman in the Australian outback trying to piece together his past while a litany of figures tried to lock him up or kill him. His only ally came in the form of people-pleasing Constable Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald).

The pair ended the series having formed the beast with two backs and discovered that Elliot was something of a beast himself. We found out that he stole cash from a gangster for whom he used to smuggle heroin, with one of his victims pulling up her shirt in the finale to reveal how his human mules would be sliced open to retrieve the goods.

Evidently, Helen looked past this reddest of red flags. Season two begins with them on a train to Cambodia 14 months later, still blissfully ensconced in the honeymoon phase. But she has been keeping a secret. She reveals to bushy-bearded Elliot that she has kept a letter with a photograph that was sent to the police station from “Tommy”, telling Elliot it is now “time you found out who you really are”. The two travel to Ireland in search of answers, but needless to say this isn’t going to be a typical family reunion. An impressively violent, gloriously fun caper lies ahead.

The Tourist perfectly nails a tone that is grisly and rambunctious in equal measure. A heart-stoppingly tense chase through the countryside, in which a van threatens to squish our forgetful protagonist, ends on a superbly silly punchline, with him falling down a never-ending hill, each protracted tumble and roll getting more hilarious. Separated from his loving girlfriend, it’s a fight to stay alive as she tries to figure out what the hell is going on and why everyone in this sleepy patch of rural Ireland is bloodthirsty, deranged or both.

Meanwhile, poor Elliot is in a cycle of capture, escape and recapture by a sadistic crew connected to his colourful past. They are having a whale of a time playing Jigsaw-esque games with him, suggesting he saw off his own legs to escape. Dornan finds the humour with a bemused reaction to this gory but befuddling plan.

The twists come thick and fast: some funny, some cruel, almost all ludicrous. The Tourist is tautly plotted and performed with such flourish that it’s always engaging, even in its most implausible flights of fancy. Its no-holds-barred enthusiasm is hugely infectious.

By the time the fourth of the six episodes that were made available for review concludes, it’s hard to recall precisely how or why we ended up here. The creators’ penchant for a plot twist every 12 minutes or so, and a new villain being introduced just about as frequently, means the recaps at the start of each episode do a lot of the heavy lifting. But even if you struggle to follow exactly who wants what and why they are seeking revenge or a big payout, the show skates by on its charms. The Tourist proves that even if every project has not been able to showcase Dornan’s charms, he certainly has an ample supply at his disposal.

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The Tourist Reviews

With a dash of humor and some Hitchcock-esque directorial flourishes, the film’s scenario could have been fun. But the production takes the lazy approach and leaves the viewer palpably aware of it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 3, 2023

But even with its good-looking cast and locations, “The Tourist” is too shallow, too flat, and ultimately forgettable.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 27, 2022

The Tourist is not an absolute debacle, and was able to entertain a tolerant audience. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 9, 2022

The action scenes are sluggish when they should punch, the leads seem indifferent when we’re to believe they’re falling in love, and there’s a sense of burden as the plot twists and turns.

Full Review | May 24, 2022

The Tourist had all the elements in place to truly be a thing of beauty. Which makes it such a shame the script is so predictable and ugly.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 14, 2021

The chemistry is nonexistent, the supporting roles don't come any more generic, and too many laughable occasions arise from the characters laboring dramatically to be intense.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 30, 2020

Jolie, while certainly able to pull off the tall and lanky look, seems to be looking around for a starving child to tend to or adopt.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4.0 | Sep 26, 2020

You have beautiful people doing cool stuff in beautiful environments. If you're into that sort of thing, then this movie is for you.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 12, 2020

Despite the star power, the film lacks fireworks. It proves to be a case of big star power with low wattage.

Full Review | May 8, 2019

The dreadful dialogues and plot-holes do not help.

Full Review | Jan 19, 2019

A silly inane story lacking strong characters and ay sense of adventure.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jun 30, 2013

A creaking "star vehicle" for two stars who should have known better, and maybe had a little chemistry.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 16, 2013

[The Tourist] is very entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable from the very start and doesn't let up until the screen goes black, which is something that very few films are able to pull off nowadays.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 22, 2012

Full Review | Original Score: C | Feb 18, 2012

Overall an interesting and at times very gripping film, but one that perhaps could have done with taking a few more risks

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2011

It's a self-conscious attempt at a Hollywood caper with the mix of comedy, romance and conspiracy watered down to the point where you can see straight through it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 14, 2011

Depp and Jolie together create a chemical black hole. They couldn't produce sparks with dry hair and a comb.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | May 3, 2011

The Tourist certainly looks fabulous - as befits the setting, the stars and the gorgeous costumes . The trouble is that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's movie is far too elegant to break into a sweat ... The viewer's pulse doesn't quicken.

Full Review | May 3, 2011

Something has gone really, really wrong here.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 4, 2011

I'm afraid the stars' vacation videos are probably more interesting than this poorly handled mistaken-identity caper, which isn't funny enough to be a comedy or dramatic enough to be a thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 3, 2011

The Tourist

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Jamie Dornan (Elliot) Danielle Macdonald (Helen Chambers) Greg Larsen (Ethan Krum) Victoria Haralabidou (Lena Pascal) Shalom Brune-Franklin (Luci) Olwen Fouéré (Niamh Cassidy) Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Billy) Conor MacNeill (Detective Ruairi Slater) Mark McKenna (Fergal McDonnell) Nessa Matthews (Orla McDonnell)

Jack Williams, Harry Williams

When a man wakes up in the Australian outback with no memory, he must use the few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him.

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Danielle Macdonald really liked the script for The Tourist which is good because she was cast in the show

Macdonald stars opposite Jamie Dornan in the Netflix show about a man with amnesia

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The Tourist season 2 review: Jamie Dornan's thriller returns with a bang

The Tourist makes its way to Netflix with a ridiculously entertaining batch of new episodes

Jamie Dornan’s turn in The Tourist will make you forget about Christian Grey

With the Belfast star in the driver’s seat, HBO Max’s six-part series piles on the twists, turns, and the occasional …

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‘The Tourist’ Review: Jamie Dornan’s Slow Burn Amnesia Drama Is a Boring Ultimatum

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Having a main character who can’t remember anything can be an incredibly freeing and constricting prospect all at once. Rarely does a story get the opportunity to follow someone with as close to a blank slate as you can get. But without the shortcuts of a protagonist with a baseline amount of knowledge about themselves, there’s a lot of gaps left to be filled by those on the periphery of that life. When presented the choice between these two possibilities, the new HBO Max original “ The Tourist ” opts for a heavy dose of the latter. What seems at the outset like a chance for Jamie Dornan to do some heavy existential lifting never quite makes good on that promise. Instead, “The Tourist” eventually settles into a conventional web of TV intrigue with one convenient mind wipe at the center.

“The Tourist” starts out coy, presenting Dornan as a nameless traveler through the Australian outback. Methodically going about his journeys across stretches of empty desert, he’s soon set upon by a big rig intent on driving him off the road. Quicker than you can read the plot synopsis for “Duel,” our would-be hero flips over in a mangled hail of shatterproof glass and twisted metal. When he finally wakes up later in the hospital, he can’t remember his name or what led him there.

So begins a thorny, interlocking mess of personal histories and frustrations, one that draws in just about everyone who tries to help out This Man as he pieces together facts from scraps of paper and grainy surveillance footage from cameras at roadside outfits. He has two main helpers in this quest. Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), the traffic patrol officer initially in charge of taking This Man’s statement, decides to offer a helping hand to help him get back on his feet after he’s literally back on his feet. A chance meeting and a surprise result of a trip to the diner brings him in the orbit of another potential helper Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin).

Luci’s entrance is a jolt to the series’ dour energy, but it kickstarts a new wave of action-thriller hangups that “The Tourist” ultimately never quite shakes. This Man may not remember who he is, but there are certainly others who do. One of them is Billy (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), a no-nonsense tracker with a smooth husky baritone and a snappy red velvet fedora. (Incidentally, Ólafsson is maybe the only cast member who seems to be really enjoying himself here.) Each new addition to this menacing collection of interested parties — also including a Major Crimes detective (Damon Herriman) and a few shadowy entrepreneurs — tips the scale further from a thoughtful examination of a person’s attempts at fashioning a new life to a pedestrian cat-and-mouse hunt.

“The Tourist” slowly pulls the curtain back on This Man as the character gets some answers of his own. Even in doing that, this show has a weird relationship to urgency. The writing team of Harry and Jack Williams start out this series with life-or-death stakes and then try to graft some intimate small-scale storytelling on top of it. Helen’s home life gradually curdles as the attention from her fiancé Ethan (Greg Larsen) grows less sweet with each passing interaction. She’s the prime example of one of the main assumptions of “The Tourist”: that anyone assisting This Man recover from a traumatic accident must therefore have their own requisite trauma to be in a position to help. While those parallels may work in theory, it only ends up pulling the show in plenty of directions it doesn’t have the grace to handle.

There’s admittedly some dark comedy to be found in the idea of trying to sort out your own memories and mostly finding people who want you dead. In that way Dornan is a flexible enough presence to be able to handle his own in the show’s more physical moments while also being a bit goofy. (He’s not as locked in as he is when singing to seagulls , but then again, who on Earth is?) Against the backdrop of an increasing amount of bloodshed, those tension-cutting moments never have quite enough bite to justify themselves. It’s more indicative of a simple origin story stretched thin over too much empty, arid landscape.

It’s only when the show makes its grand breakthrough in the final third that “The Tourist” gets a much needed influx of energy. Still, it’s another example of something in this show that feels like it should work in the abstract, but in practice simply feels like slapping on an extra layer without properly seeding that spirit throughout. It doesn’t help that what ultimately boils down to a sentence-long explanation of the root of This Man’s troubles is laden with a bevy of unnecessary detail that adds little to the ultimate payoff. This Man may be wrestling with whether or not he’s a good person, but it’s drowned out by a host of distractions in service of tidying up every last possible dangling thread.

“The Tourist” is so committed to explaining each last puzzle piece that it seems incompatible with what’s compelling about this premise. This is a show that wants points for delving into the ambiguity of human memory, all while laying out the circumstances of This Man’s pre-accident life and leaving precious little to the imagination. When the people around him largely exist for a specific purpose, it’s hard to keep caring about them once they’ve fulfilled that role (if they’re even alive once it’s done). Any unconventional way that “The Tourist” lays out its grand design is more in service of a show built around withholding information rather than being a way to better understand the man fighting for his life in the middle of it.

“The Tourist” is now available to stream on HBO Max.

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TV Review – The Tourist

March 7, 2022 by Martin Carr

Martin Carr reviews The Tourist…

This off-kilter thriller from the creators of Baptiste  and  The Missing , may feel like a Western with road movie tropes, but also sits squarely in Coen Brothers country. Trying to pressgang  The Tourist  into any traditional genre soon becomes an exercise in futility, as events begin to escalate quite quickly. Quirky encounters and an opening straight out of Steven Spielberg’s Duel , only manages to set the tone for five minutes, before another leftfield addition takes audiences elsewhere. Thankfully free from the constraints of a cohesive plot, Harry and Jack Williams pull together their disparate plot points into a story which feels genuinely organic.

As the eponymous man, Jamie Dornan excels in plugging himself straight into this ramshackle aesthetic, maintaining both mystique and momentum effortlessly. Going from car crash victim to would-be fugitive, this man with no name finds himself pursed half way across Australia, in a series which takes its time getting to the point. Helped in no small measure by Danielle Macdonald as local constable Helen Chamber, The Tourist taps into Coen Brothers touchstone Fargo , as well as lifting language liberally from their own unique back catalogue.

Tonally the shifts between comedy and thriller are deftly handled, making  The Tourist an extremely engaging piece of television. Strong support from Shalom Brune-Franklin’s Luci, as partial accomplice and erstwhile love interest is welcome, while Olaf Darri Olafsson offers up a mountainous distraction as Billy, who wants to find our protagonist for completely different reasons.

However, beyond those tangible elements a second must be put aside for composer Dominik Scheer, who adds crucial atmospherics through his music. Using incidental piano accompaniment, snippets from syncopated strings, as well as brooding percussion, Dominik lifts this thriller into a different league. Combined with the visuals that depict a bleak and barren dust bowl tundra, where locals possess their own sunny disposition, The Tourist  sets out to embrace something different.

If Taika Waititi made a Coen Brothers pastiche, then this may well be the end result, as comedic sensibilities and quirky perspectives clash. In this universe, dry wit and a laidback approach to life supersedes anything life threatening, as a series of unfortunate events culminates with law enforcement on the lamb, and more than a few dead bodies. As this intriguing domino effect continues and revelations come thick and fast, The Tourist loses none of its momentum, but instead becomes more cohesive.

In a strange way that is what audiences will discover as this tangled web continues to play out over time. Not only does the man with no name cease to be The Tourist in this equation, but more important than that, this series is guaranteed to keep them guessing until the final frame.

The Tourist is available on HBO Max on March 8th.

Martin Carr

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Tourist’ On Netflix, Where Jamie Dornan Plays A Man Without His Memory Trying To Outrun His Past

Where to stream:.

• The Tourist

What would you do if you lost your memory? Not just what you had for breakfast, but all sense of who you are and who is in your life? Then you find out that someone really, really wants to see you dead? That’s the idea behind the new Netflix series, which originally ran on HBO Max back in 2022.

THE TOURIST : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of the arid environment in the Australian Outback. A tiny car drives down an empty road.

The Gist: A man (Jamie Dornan) stops for gas; he’s wearing a generic “AUSTRALIA” tourist t-shirt. He has no idea why the attendant at the station makes him sign out for the bathroom key. We see him come out the back door of the bathroom, next to the Dumpsters.

As he’s driving on the seemingly empty road in his tiny Mazda, a massive tractor trailer bears down on him. When the tractor trailer rams the man’s car, he realizes it’s not just an aggressive driver. After a long chase over some rough terrain, the man thinks he’s gotten away from the truck, when the truck slams into him, causing the tiny car to roll over a few times.

The man wakes up in the local hospital, surprisingly not severely injured. However, he has no idea who he is or what he was doing. He doesn’t even remember his own name. He can recall a song title when he’s in an MRI machine, but that’s about it.

A friendly local cop, Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), goes to his room to take a statement. She is a bit uncomfortable with the man’s lack of memory, but ends up being reassuring to an extent. The only thing he finds in his possessions is a note to meet someone the next day at a diner in a nearby town. Helen says she’ll look into that.

We follow Helen home and see that, like most of us, she has issues with her weight, not the least of which is exacerbated by her fiancé Ethan (Greg Larsen) and their upcoming wedding.

Another thing we see is someone buried underground. Desperate to get out of whatever box he’s been put in, he tries to call someone on his phone, but no one is answering.

The man goes outside to get air, but gets lost inside the hospital, scaring him senseless. He decides to check himself out of the hospital the next day, against medical advice, because he needs to go to that diner and find out just who wanted to meet him there. Helen understands why he wants to do it, and gives him a bus ticket to get there.

At the diner, he meets a waitress named Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin), who seems to be fascinated by his amnesia. When she spills lemonade on him, she takes him out to where there are bathrooms. Just then, there’s an explosion, right in the booth where he was sitting. He wonders aloud why in the world someone is trying to kill him.

Pictures from a disposable camera found at the crash site help him retrace his steps, as well as video from the gift shop he visited. It brings him back to the gas station and its bathroom. He doesn’t find out his name though, as he signed the key sign-out sheet as “Crocodile Dundee.” But he finds something else; a stuffed koala that he hid next to the Dumpster. Much to his surprise, it starts ringing.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take the movie  Memento and cross it with the quirkiness of the first season of the  Fargo series, and you’ve got the vibe of  The Tourist.

Our Take: The Tourist , written by Harry Williams and Jack Williams ( The Missing, Fleabag ) looks like it’s a complex show with a twisty plot, but when you really take a close look, it’s pretty straightforward. Dornan’s character has no idea who he is; all he knows is that someone wants to kill him. With the help of Helen and others, he’ll try to piece things together before those that are after him, including Billy (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), the whistling man who almost squashed him in the tractor trailer, catch up to him.

In the first episode,  The Tourist  evolves from what seems like a thriller to a more personal narrative. It’s why we get involved in Helen’s life when she’s off-duty. In a Weight Watchers-style meeting, she claims she doesn’t like her body, even though everyone is yelling about body acceptance. But it also feels like she’s more there because of her fiancé than anything else. So even though Helen knows her name, who’s in her life and what she does, she also hasn’t found herself. Plus, she seems to be made to feel guilty about just about everything.

Perhaps as she gets more involved in the life of Dornan’s character, the more she will figure out who she is. At least that’s what we hope, because Macdonald is utterly charming as Helen, who is very much in the vein of Allison Tolman’s portrayal of Molly Solverson in the aforementioned  Fargo. She’s good at her job, even if she’s a bit green, but also is a friendly and helpful sort who needs to help herself most of all.

There is definitely a bit of a sense of humor running the first episode, but the Williamses aren’t trying to make the show quippy. The humor is there when people seem to be fascinated with Dornan’s character’s amnesia, though he assures them it’s no picnic. The humor creeps in along the edges of the show, but it does just enough to ease what is a pretty serious and grim performance by Dornan.

There is one twist near the end of the episode that we won’t spoil here, but it does make us wonder if, as things get more complicated for Dornan’s character (notice we haven’t named him yet, because the character has none as yet), the plot will become more convoluted. We hope not, as it seems the straightforward manner in which this story is being told suits  The Tourist just fine.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: When the stuffed koala starts ringing, the man digs out a burner phone and answers it. When the man who’s buried starts yelling in relief that he answered, the man says, “Uh, who’s this?”

Sleeper Star: Shalom Brune-Franklin does some compelling work as Luci, and we know that she’s much more involved in this story than most of the first episode lets on.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could find.

Our Call:  STREAM IT.  The Tourist  hooked us in with its story, plus the performances by Dornan, Macdonald and Brune-Franklin. Let’s hope the story continues to be interesting as the season goes on.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

• Jamie Dornan
• Stream It Or Skip It

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