The Tourist review: I have no idea what’s going on, but who cares… it’s a thrill ride! writes CHRISTOPHER STEVENS

The tourist

Judgement:

Danger

Judgement:

Don’t ask me what’s going on. There are murderous divers, homophobic Cambodian railway guards, messages carved on dead pigs and little boys with hypnotic stares.

Everything we know for sure, like The Tourist (BBC1) returns is that we are back in the intense, frenzied world of the Williams brothers. Trying to understand the plot, at least for the first few episodes, will only spoil the fun.

Jack and Harry Williams, undoubtedly the most imaginative writers working in television today, understand that a good chase takes precedence over everything else. When we get caught up in the excitement of a chase, we are willing to put off all other demands.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t know who the villain is and who the hero is, where they are, what they want or how it started. That can all wait. We just have to find out: will they be caught or will they escape?

That question filled most of the first hour of this six-part series, as ex-mobster Elliot (Jamie Dornan), a suspected hitman with amnesia, left Australia and returned to his native Ireland with his police officer girlfriend Helen (Danielle Macdonald). . This time she is the tourist of the title, with a guide to prove it.

No sooner had they stopped at a beauty parlor for a sandwich than a curious unblinking child came to stare intently at her – distracting her while three thugs in balaclavas ambushed Elliot in the bathroom and stuffed him into a van.

The brilliance of the action scenes in The Tourist is that, no matter how improbable the overall setup, every single element makes perfect sense. Every moment has its own logic. Of course, Elliot makes a Molotov cocktail from a whiskey bottle and his own neckerchief, and uses it to escape. Naturally, he sets it on fire with the lighter that the ticket inspector almost confiscated on a train in Southeast Asia when he and Helen were caught smoking marijuana.

And it goes without saying that when his elderly mother demands answers from one of the kidnappers’ cousins, she will end the interview by sticking a knife in the man’s eye.

Whether we’ll ever get an explanation for everything (what did the divers want from that submerged plane? Why write clues on pig bodies?), it’s too early to say. I’m just racing to keep up with the chase.

There is a preponderance of such prompts with an American slant, implying that not only the format but the questions themselves have been imported. Although he presented the panel game QI for thirteen years, this is Fry’s first attempt at organizing a traditional quiz

It’s a race to keep up with the questions Danger (ITV), no less than thirty pieces between each ad break, in this annoyingly mannered quiz imported from America. Each clue is phrased as a definition, and players must formulate their answers as questions, a convention that immediately becomes tiresome. For example, when quizmaster Stephen Fry says, “A cathedral city in eastern England and the capital of the state of Nebraska,” the correct answer is, “What is Lincoln?”

There is a preponderance of such prompts with an American slant, implying that not only the format but the questions themselves have been imported. Although he presented the panel game QI for thirteen years, this is Fry’s first attempt at organizing a traditional quiz. He seems to be trying for a Bob Monkhouse style of cleverness, but it comes off impossibly condescending.

“Good job, very good,” he continued to gurgle to the players, as if cheering on elementary school children. One was a general practitioner, the other had a PhD in nuclear physics.

He couldn’t stop grinning at one category of questions, ‘Things that lasted longer than Liz Truss’ premiership’.

“It just amuses me,” he chuckled. Maybe there will be another round on ‘Things that were more successful than Jeremy Corbyn’s Labor leadership’… but I doubt it.