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Movies & TV

02nd Jan 2024

Twisted Irish-set BBC thriller has just dropped its second season

Simon Kelly

The Tourist

A little bit closer to home.

BBC’s twisted thriller The Tourist, starring Jamie Dornan is back on our screens for a second season, this time heading to the lush Irish countryside.

Dornan stars as Elliot Stanley, an amnesiac Irishman in the Australian outback trying to figure out his murky past, his only friend being Constable Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), who helps him hunt for answers.

Episode one of season two dropped on BBC One on New Years Day, and the season is already getting rave reviews.

The Tourist drops second series on BBC One

The second season sees Elliot and Helen travel from Australia to Ireland, with the new episodes set in the main character’s homeland, which is, unfortunately for Elliot, just as full of sadistic folk trying to chase him down.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Dornan said the new series offers up “something a bit different purely by geography. I feel like the colour of the Outback, the scale of it and fear was a major character in the first series.

“We’ve taken that away this time and we have suddenly gone from the orangey dirt of the Outback to the lush green settings of Ireland. Particularly with the first episode, it’s like a Tourism Ireland advert.”

Thankfully, there was no difficult second season issues here, with reviewers and viewers alike delighted with the new episodes.

The Guardian said in their four star review: “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.”

The Independent gave it three stars, saying: “The combination of a very sexy protagonist, a slow-burning but believable romance (the chemistry between Dornan and Macdonald is, again, excellent), and stakes that get cranked higher and higher, make this a worthwhile second run.”

The Tourist season two airs on BBC One on Mondays at 9pm. UK viewers can watch the entire second season on the BBC iPlayer.

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