Review: Final season of Cinemax's 'Strike Back' is a guilty pleasure

I've always found it curious, and amusing, that the most consistently enjoyable action show about terrorism has absolutely nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Jihadists or anything else from the real-life War on Terror.

Welcome to Strike Back, which kicks off its 10-episode fourth and final season Friday 10 p.m. on Cinemax.

(There is another season, a brilliant six-part miniseries from 2010 that aired only in Britain before Cinemax got in on the series. It is known as Chris Ryan's Strike Back but it has an entirely different cast and a storyline that is very much about the real War on Terror.)

It's a breathless, take-no-prisoners thriller filmed in exotic locales around the globe. The British-American co-production has better fight scenes, gun battles, explosions and sex scenes than most Hollywood blockbusters

It's the ultimate guilty pleasure.

Set in an unreal neverland populated by bad guys who have far more in common with Ian Fleming's SPECTRE than with Isis, Strike Back revolves around the crazy, banter-filled odd-couple relationship between two special forces operatives who work for a shadowy, mega-secret British spy org named Section 20.

Philip Winchester (Crusoe, Camelot) plays Michael Stonebridge, a by-the-book career soldier who is paired with the insolent, rule-breaking and roguish - if entirely lovable - Damian Scott played by Australian thesp Sullivan Stapleton (Underbelly Files: Infiltration).

The series veritably crackles with the chemistry between the pair, who are propelled each week into the kind of impossible, deadly missions you don't often see outside video games.

Their team is led by the wise Lt. Col. Philip Locke (Robson Green) and includes two derriere-kicking female soldiers (Milauna Jackson and Michelle Lukes).

In the season opener, Section 20 is called to Bangkok to find the daughter of the British ambassador (Tim McInnerny) and his comely, secretive wife (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's Michelle Yeoh). The evildoers don't want money: They want the ambassador to blow up a peace conference!

Composed of two-episode stories, season sees Section 20 going after the yakuza, North Korean zealots and Russian mobsters.

Strike Back may be entirely unrealistic, with a storyline that lacks logic, but before the opening scene ends you'll forget about such petty concerns.

tirdad@phillynews.com

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