Original subtitles

The starting point, of course, was Chris Ryan's novel, Strike Back,

which I saw racked up in Stansted airport, actually,

on the way out to see a friend and I bought it.

And I read the jacket and dived into the book.

And I thought it was exactly the sort of thing I was looking to do.

When I read it, I straight away thought, you know,

most people do get excited with actions, helicopters, guns

and yes it is, you know, that's exciting to play with,

but it's just a backdrop and in front of that and in the middle of that

are these kind of relationships and these human beings

that try to exist in extraordinary circumstances.

And I think that's what makes it interesting dramatically.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Go! Go! Go!

The series begins with a firefight set in Basra in 2003.

And I go alongside four Special Forces,

of which Richard is one of them.

He is a killing machine. He's SAS.

He came through the military from about the age of 19.

His father was in the military.

He has all the siblings who were also in the military.

He's got to a point in his career

where he's probably the best he's ever going to be.

Shoot him.

Go! Shoot him!

What's the hold-up?

This catastrophic thing happens when he's in an operation in Basra.

And he fails to kill a child who has a bomb strapped to him,

which one would perceive to be a heroic act.

In terms of military, because that child then went on to

effectively kill three members of his team,

it was deemed a failure so he had to retire.

Basically his career fell apart.

And that's the beginning of the story of Porter.

The interesting thing with John Porter, Richard's character,

is that he has to be calm within the midst of these war zones.

So he has this... That's why he's so proficient.

Because he doesn't get emotionally involved.

He's an automaton.

He's not a cold-blooded killer but he operates very calmly

under great duress, which is why he is so good.

With John Porter, we have a really good hero.

You know. He's played by Richard, it's quite silent,

it's quite quiet, quite determined.

You know, it's six episodes but each episode is a double episode,

so you've got three movies.

And you've got a collection of characters that you can relate to

and follow on this sort of incredible journey.

The logistics for this show are on an enormous scale.

I mean, it's helicopters landing on rooftops,

it's huge explosions, it's large battle sequences.

We have action on a huge scale,

but sometimes I think television and film can be over-conscious

of trying to show them on the onscreen.

It's all there, the cameras are rolling, everything's happening,

but very often the focus will be on the character in the foreground,

not on the explosion behind.

And what that does is it draws you into a much more intimate human experience.

Steve. Steve!

Porter!

Where are the other men? Collinson, where's Mike and Keith?

- Fuck. - They're dead.

Porter! Porter!

The interaction between Porter and Collinson

is being very much affected by that kind of relationship.

It's cowboys and Indians in the playground,

but without detracting from the seriousness of what we're trying to do.

They keep each other as close as they can, and you know,

you keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

- John, it wasn't your fault. - What did he say to me?

- What did... - The kid.

The boy that I hit.

What exactly did he say to me?

It's an Arabic saying.

"I lay my life for your sake." It's a debt of honour.

Both these men are locked in one single event

that happened in the stairwell in the first 10 minutes of the film.

And it will last for the entire six hours,

the resolution of what really happened in the stairwell,

as Layla says to Porter at the end of episode four.

I need to know what happened during the Bratton extraction in 2003.

Porter!

Where's Mike and Keith?

Where's Mike and Keith?

Why do you want to know?

Because I need to trust the people my life depends on.

There's history between you and Collinson.

Well, Layla works for Section 20

and is sort of the second-in-command from Collinson.

She's a very kind of ambitious, very driven woman

in a, obviously, a kind of predominantly male-dominated kind of environment.

She is kind of very sharp

and someone who's quite tough and doesn't take any nonsense.

And she has a very kind of sceptical opinion of Porter at first,

because he hasn't sort of risen through the ranks,

or come through the system in the way that

most people in the position he ends up in normally would.

You didn't think it worth mentioning

that Porter's been off active duty for nearly eight years,

had borderline post-traumatic stress disorder,

a 10% weakness in one arm,

and what effectively amounts to a dishonourable discharge?

Layla, we have nothing.

Jodhi May has been absolutely fantastic.

She brings something so cerebral to that character.

And has turned Layla into a really interesting woman

who can be both political and active in the theatre of war,

and I think that's a real achievement.

- Alpha Team, this is Section 20... - Lieutenant, report!

Motherfucking...

The entire building's just gone up, sir.

I can't see them. I can't see Alpha Team.

The control room is very exciting because, you know,

you have this clock running in the background

of sort of countdown of how much time they have

before something's going to go wrong.

And just to have that there and the setup, it's all live,

all this sort of equipment that's around us is all interactable.

And then we were shooting something with a live feed with Jodhi shooting

from a helicopter which they'd set up outside.

So the sense of immediacy makes it very exciting.

And the lovely thing about this story, particularly with Danni as well,

because I've had to do a lot of work with her,

is it feels that there's so far to go with her.

And they're all powerful, strong, witty and intelligent roles.

Her secret agenda, if there is one,

is this relationship she has with John Porter,

which is still a bit ambiguous, you know.

He's introduced to her in an interesting way,

in that she's posing as a nurse whilst he's being...

having his medical to be reactivated into the Secret Service.

How are you feeling this evening, Sergeant?

Absolutely bloody knackered, Sergeant.

Yeah, well, getting a body into shape in a matter of days...

...is going to hurt.

- You saying I'm not in shape? - No, no.

They call it a honey trap, you know.

Posing as a love interest to him in order to find out

certain psychological things about him.

But then, as it goes, you know, they slightly fall for each other

and it's possibly an interesting relationship.

- There's a good boy. - Oh, I'm a very good boy.

Well, then I think you probably

deserve a bit of a treat, don't you?

Hmm?

We don't want to turn off the female audience.

I mean, it's important that there are strong women in strong women roles.

But I think the scripts reflect that

and I think hopefully there's a good balance.

Orla was one of the first characters to actually shoot anything on the show.

You know, the first thing she did was one of her anchor feeds from Basra.

Richard actually said to me at the time that he thought,

"Now, I know where we are. Now, I know the country we're in."

And yeah, it was a good thing to kick off with.

I remember seeing the tape of it and it was delivered so truthfully that

it was the first time I sort of sat down and went,

"Okay, I know what this show's going to be now."

Because up until that point, I had no concept.

And the truthfulness with which she played that first sequence, reporting...

"Katie Dartmouth, reporting from Basra,"

really kind of sort of locked something into my stomach.

...undercurrent of violence hides just beneath the surface.

With the US pull-out scheduled for the end of the year,

many Iraqis I've spoken to are worried.

There's something about being a correspondent that strikes me

as something very, very courageous.

It is very courageous, especially in certain zones.

Obviously in a war zone like Iraq,

you would have to have your wits about you.

She's been a significant part of Porter's evolution, really.

Because again, it's something to do with the nurturing.

You know, she's playing a reporter who is taken hostage.

Oh, God! No! No! No!

A British TV journalist has just been abducted near Basra.

Shit. You know who this is, don't you?

Yeah. We're trying to establish if her kidnap is incidental

or directly related to her father.

- Any contact? - Not yet.

All we know is that Katie was abducted 17 kilometres from Basra,

near a town called Al Haritha.

My character is in charge of Section 20,

which is a division of military intelligence

that works very closely with Special Forces.

The Section 20 is sort of a clandestine group.

We sort of sit between politicians and MoD.

We sort of try to sort things out

in the neutral zone.

- Major Collinson heads up the unit. - Sir Patrick.

With Hugh's experience in the field

and his specialist Arabic knowledge,

he's uniquely placed to resolve this situation.

If you find Katie, what can you do?

Section 20 works closely with UK Special Forces.

Once we have her location, we can start implementing a rescue.

The character who is kidnapped, played by Orla Brady,

realises something's happening when she about to be sort of kidnapped.

So she takes a photograph of the character coming towards her,

and takes the image and texts it back to England.

Although it's ostensibly an action story,

what is at its heart and what I thought was a beautiful premise,

is a man who is, you know, he's into his life,

he's, you know, he's not some youngster at the beginning of his life,

in his life, he's made a terrible mistake.

British Intelligence authorities have confirmed

that this is likely to be the face of one of her abductors,

disguised in an Iraqi police uniform...

British security forces believe this photograph,

taken on Miss Dartmouth's mobile phone...

He wants the chance to go back. It's eating away at his soul.

And he's living and waiting for the day when he can do that.

And then he gets a chance.

He's watching for it, he's waiting for it and he gets that chance.

It's been very interesting

watching Richard go through this process.

And he's had a huge amount of training on this.

And he's spent very intensive time and he's a very hard-working actor.

It's okay. It's okay. It's only me. It's John.

We're going to get through this. You and me.

You know that, don't you?

Yes.

She's taken hostage and is seriously,

in a seriously sort of damaged condition when he finds her.

And again, having that thread through,

you know, that thread of compassion in him

to be able to deal with her in that state has been very interesting.

The scenes between Orla and Richard

in a prison cell in a terrorist safe house

are some of the most powerful things we could film.

Just going to loosen these ropes. Make you more comfortable.

- Is that better? - Yeah.

How does that arm feel?

There are scenes in the cell, where he comes to rescue Katie,

that are, they're kind of, they're almost like love scenes.

There's an intimacy to them.

You know, there's that bond that would form

between somebody who is in grave danger

and somebody who comes and says, "I'm going to help you."

Now listen.

They're going to come for me first.

That's our chance. I'll overpower them.

Then I'll come back for you.

Going to get you home, Katie.

I'll need to put this hood back on. I'm sorry.

I understand.

You're, you know, on a precipice together

and so you telescope 20 years of knowing somebody into

a few short hours.

And you know them on a level that you'll possibly never know anybody else.

Stay low.

Come on. Head down.

I think it's good to have a context which is real, so you...

It just makes it more believable. and also, in a sense, more interesting.

So, it's good, strong entertainment, but with a reality.

It's a real rollercoaster.

There are explosions and helicopters.

It's ambitious.

And really exciting.

There's a lot of boys playing bang-bang.

Go. Go. We've got this.

We've been using AK Kalashnikovs...

sniper rifle...

had an RPG fired at us...

Get down! Get down!

...some hand grenades...

- Grenade! - Down!

Chris Ryan was a real serving SAS soldier,

and he's still very, very involved

in the intelligence and security industry to this day.

So his books have a veracity about them that we're able to mine and tap into.

So I started training with an ex-army fitness instructor.

So we kind of worked on not just the shape of my body

but my fitness level and trying to get into a point

where I had a shape that looked like it had been...

It had evolved through work rather than being in a gym, if you see what I mean.

So I did a lot of cross-training and running with weights

that kind of replicate weaponry

and, sort of, trying to get movement that would, you know,

replicate the kind of thing you have to do in action.

It's always slightly challenging to make it just look normal.

You know, we're running through the bush with guns,

letting off AK-47s, and it would be very easy to...

to just play-act.

But most actors I know want to make sure that it looks authentic.

So we want to know how the gun works, we want to know how we hold it,

where we hold it, what the kickback is, how far the target is away,

how we reload.

So it's very exciting for us, as actors.

I'm the armourer on this production, Strike Back.

My job, basically, is to train the actors.

Don't drop your head down to it. Don't worry.

You just... You're looking straight in the door.

- The gun is there. Okay? - Okay. Yeah.

With firearms, primarily it's actually to make sure that the weapons work,

load them, unload them,

make sure the safety distances are kept to,

nobody gets hurt with the cases flying out.

We worked with weapons and tactical training

with three SAS, ex-SAS guys,

who stayed with us the whole time on set and picked us up on every single move,

and anything, any detail, that wasn't truthful and wasn't real,

they'd be jumping on it straight away.

Well, we started off with the SAS in Iraq,

where Porter walks around with this rifle, called an M4,

on which we put torches, it had a different sight on.

You can take this handle off and you put different sighting systems onto it.

Shit.

Collinson, he had a MT-51, which is specifically used by the SAS,

which is a.762 calibre.

We learnt how to strip the guns, to reassemble, to fire, to...

Basically, to feel comfortable in and around a gun, yeah,

and it took a few days, but we became...

We wanted to get to the stage where during a take,

if something malfunctioned with a gun,

we would be able to deal with it ourselves.

And so, as you would in a firefight or a war,

be able to reload and sort of be self-sufficient, really.

Andrew, when Andrew came here, first of all, from the UK...

Be nice, Lance, come on.

...he didn't even know which end was the right way to hold it.

But after a little bit of training and whatever, he's a natural.

Look at that. Natural-born, steely-eyed killer.

We've got all the gear and no idea.

The guys, the Iraqis, all ran around with AK-47s.

Here's an example of a dummy one.

These are rubber, just for background, and the guys running around,

um, you can't get too close to the camera, as you can probably see.

It's just what we call "ballistic masturbation".

Working on film sets, we've got sort of extenuating circumstances, per se,

that we work with because they're not live firing weapons.

And also, given the different scenes,

there's different requirements that the director might ask for

that we've got to modify certain things to make it look good for camera.

The mindset and the mentality and the operational planning

of the kind of things we're trying to do,

we're trying to be as authentic about it as we can.

And that's essential to me, and I think essential to the audience

and to the whole production,

that everything we do feels real and authentic.

The armourer, the special effects guys, the stunt guys, the safety officer,

we all work very, very closely together because we've got to...

I mean, we've all got a common interest in their safety and security on the set.

Just past this rock over here, he's going to call ceasefire.

When he calls ceasefire, what I want you to do is

you stand up and you're still looking, you're scanning the bush,

and down here, and looking where the dead bodies,

'cause there's dead guys lying there, so you've got an eye on them, okay?

Come across. Come across.

Guys, not too far.

Okay, you see at the top, there's S, R and A.

S is for safe, R is for repeat or repetition, and A is for automatic.

What does R stand for? Rat-a-tat-tat.

Whenever a helicopter lands, everybody wants to go to it,

so the challenge with the helicopter mainly is

number one, no one must go to the wrong side of the helicopter,

and number two, no one must fall out of it.

From the back door backwards is an absolute no-go area.

If you do want to try and get photos with the chopper, you know,

somebody taking a nice photo of you, don't touch the helicopter

because it's got all this sticky paint on it, it's removable, okay?

You're going to walk away with green hands

and you're going to stop us from actually flying.

Things like caps, stuff like that,

absolutely no-no while these rotors are going.

There's another good point here.

Because we've got a little bit of high and low ground here,

the blades will go down, depending on where the skids are.

So all the guys who are in the chopper now

have already practised going out nice and low.

If you do approach at any time, please just check with me on the ground,

and keep down low.

Do not walk in there because I have actually seen it before,

where somebody's decided to go away without a head.

And it's not funny. So I'm going to be super-serious.

From that door backwards, if I see anybody,

I'm going to give them one warning,

after that, I'm going to take my helicopter away.

When you're directing action, it's, you know,

the action part of it is kind of, you know,

I want it to feel almost incidental.

What's always important is the character, the story,

the moments, the emotional beats, of all of those action sequences.

Yeah, today, we've got a chopper flying in an arc,

we've got a guy being rescued, as far as the scene goes.

And, um, yeah, we've just got to watch

that the crew doesn't get too close to the chopper,

stays away from the tail rotors, that the pilots are happy at all times.

You get Richard and all are safely on board, run round.

As soon as they're back on board, the moment they're back on board,

well, it takes off, leaving As'ad behind.

And so this camera will hopefully see that as it rises, see As'ad is...

Stay low.

Come on. Head down.

Not you. On your knees.

Katie, sit here.

Zero, this is two-eight Alpha. Hostage secure. Moving now.

- What? - Don't move.

What are you doing? Wait! As'ad!

John! They're leaving him!

Layla, we need to go back now!

Orders from Collinson!

We all want to make something fantastic,

and certainly Dan has wanted to push it out as much as possible, you know.

We want as many explosions as possible.

We want great scenes with the actors jumping over cliffs, right,

dropping into the river, you know, all that kind of stuff.

A lot of it we've achieved, actually. I'm really pleased.

We've got some great production value.

Um, we shot it on 35mm, so it has a real feature-film look about it.

And, you know, plenty of extras and plenty of fun, basically.

And this is something that's very unusual on television.

It takes an awful lot of planning and an awful lot of people

to be involved in the design, the storyboarding, the special effects,

the stunts, to coordinate very, very clearly,

to make those achievable, but also to make them believable.

I had been to South Africa several times before.

I love South Africa, actually. I love the climate,

I love the people, I love the locations.

And the most extraordinary thing about South Africa is that

you can duplicate almost anywhere in the world.

I think South Africa has got the most incredible locations.

It's got great crews.

- Sound and speed. 661, take one. - Mark.

You feel like the industry's building, you know,

and that's, I think, quite exciting.

You know, I think the crews remind me a lot of British crews.

Just get it done.

The locations for episode one and two require us to recreate southern Iraq.

And we're able to do that in South Africa

in an area called Upington near the Namibian border

where they had flat deserts.

But also the Orange River creates a fertile flood plain

very like the Euphrates delta, which is somewhere I'd been, actually,

so when I saw it, I thought, "Oh, my God."

You know, the opening of episode one,

is all about a hostage extraction by an SAS team

that land on the roof of a safe house in the centre of Basra

just before the beginning of Operation Shock and Awe.

And we were filming it over a week

of nights here in Yeoville in Johannesburg,

which has some fantastic '30s buildings very like parts of Basra are today.

Five, four, three, two, one.

Go! Go! Go!

Johannesburg is clearly a very vibrant city

and there's, you know, lots going on here.

And then you don't have to go too far before you're in Africa, you know.

And that's very exciting for me and it's a huge privilege.

I couldn't quite work out why we were coming to Africa to film.

But apart from the work ethic from the crew,

which has been absolutely astonishing,

having the variety of landscapes so accessible

and a consistent climate is one of the reasons why we're here.

We've been, you know... Joburg's been Basra,

Upington is obviously the desert.

I've never been to this country before

and to have Joburg and this, you know, so close...

I mean, it's great. It think that's probably why we're filming here as well,

because you get this incredible landscape

within an hour's drive. So, yeah, very lucky.