The Tourist is a drama thriller television series. It stars Jamie Dornan as the victim of a car crash who wakes up in hospital with amnesia.
The series premiered on 1 January 2022 on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK, the next day on Stan in Australia, and 3 March on HBO Max in the US.[1] It is distributed internationally by All3Media.[2]
In March 2022, the series was officially renewed for a second series,[3] and filming started in April 2023. The second series was set in Ireland.[4] Second season premiered on 1 January 2024 on BBC iPlayer an BBC One in the UK and on Stan in Australia. In the US series has moved to Netflix in the U.S. after being dropped by Max. Netflix will launch Season 2 on 29 February 2024 and stream the first several weeks earlier.[5]
Plot
Series 1
When a man wakes up with amnesia in an Australian hospital, he must use what few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him.
Cast and characters
Jamie Dornan as The Man/Elliot Stanley/Eugene Cassidy
A man drives across the Australian outback, stopping briefly for a bathroom break. After the break, he is chased and run off the road by a cargo truck. The man wakes up in hospital with no memory of who he is, why he is there, or what has happened to him. He has a note in his jeans pocket to meet someone at a cafe at a specified time. He is ushered out of the cafe by Luci to go to the bathroom right before a bomb goes off. Billy arrives at the hospital with a bouquet of flowers looking for the man. When Luci is by herself, she deletes photos on her phone taken earlier with the man.
The man and Luci race to find the mystery caller who is apparently buried alive underground in Karramundi. After unsuccessfully trying to drive there when a sandstorm impairs their progress, they finally rent a helicopter to get there. Luci and the man eventually find the mystery caller, but he is already dead. After following up with some hospital staff, Helen interviews Billy about why he went to the hospital. Helen's fiance Ethan is angry with Helen for working on the case, and thinks she should instead be spending more time with him. After seeing Luci's signature on the helicopter's insurance waiver, the man realizes that Luci is the person who wrote the note sending him to the cafe in the first place. Luci finally admits that she knows him, and that his name is Elliot Stanley.
Luci informs Elliot they met in Bali and had a brief affair before Elliot killed an apparent assassin in self-defence, which "made some bad people angry". They later separated and Luci returned home to Burnt Ridge. She claims to know nothing of Elliot's life. Over drinks, Luci and Elliott rekindle their feelings and sleep together. In the morning they evade the police looking for them (DI Lachlan Rogers from Adelaide and Constable Lammon from Burnt Ridge police) and return to Sue's house in Burnt Ridge, looking for a charger for the buried man's phone. Helen, unsettled by Billy's intimidating behaviour, worries The Man/Elliot is in danger. She ignores Ethan's pleadings and also drives to Sue's house. Billy tracks Elliott, Luci and Helen to Sue's house and attacks with a shotgun, killing Sue's husband Ralph. Elliot saves Helen's life by pushing her away from a shot. Eventually Elliott hits Billy in the head with a crowbar and Billy staggers and falls down a well, apparently dead. Luci and Elliot flee while Helen waits for the police. Luci leaves Elliot, saying she doesn't want another failed relationship with him. Rogers and Lammon fly to the site Elliott and Luci visited the previous day and find the buried man's body, and are informed about the shootout in Burnt Ridge. Rogers issues an arrest order for Elliott as a murder suspect. Helen stays to guard Sue's house after the rest of the police leave; Elliot returns for the phone. Helen hears Rogers' arrest order for Elliot on her radio and attempts to arrest him, but Elliot steals her gun and kidnaps Helen, forcing her to drive him away in her car. Luci returns to her trailer and hears movement inside; she opens the door violently and knocks over the not-dead Billy, holding a bat. He greets Luci as 'Victoria'.
A Greek man, Kostas, and his brother Dmitri are on Kostas's private plane to Australia. Kostas is after Elliot. Luci and Billy are fighting in her trailer before Billy is stabbed in the neck by some window-glass and dies. Luci answers Billy's ringing phone and informs Kostas his "goon is dead"; Kostas also refers to Luci as 'Victoria' before she hangs up. Kostas becomes angry but his brother calms him. Their plane lands at small Australian airstrip and they are collected by a taxi to take them to Burnt Ridge. Luci/Victoria grabs a pile of fake passports, pockets one but slips in Billy's blood on the way out and unwittingly drops the other passports. In her car, Helen and Elliot drive to Luci's trailer and find Billy's body and the fake passports. Realizing Luci has lied extensively to him, Elliot suspects she is trying to leave the country and demands Helen drive them to the nearest airport (250km away). Before they leave Helen, unseen by Elliot, writes her car registration number on a piece of paper and leaves it on the counter. Later, Rogers and Lammon arrive at Luci's trailer, find the note and issue a lookout for Helen's car. Lammon is made ill by the sight of Billy's body, so Rogers orders him home. On the way to the airport, Helen's car breaks down and they are forced to push the car to the next town, where repairs will take until the next day. Elliot and Helen rent a motel room and the owner gives them the 'Honeymoon Suite'. They have dinner in a Mexican restaurant, enjoy themselves and get drunk on dirty martinis. In the morning they wake up naked in bed together, although Elliot is sure no sex took place. In the taxi, Kostas drinks from a flask into which he drops some chemicals and is increasingly annoyed by the driver's loud slurping of his own drink and inane banter. Dmitri tries to calm him initially but eventually urges Kostas to kill the driver, which he does, and takes over driving himself. At the airport, Luci resolves to "end this" and places a phone call to Jaipur Cars, India and asks for a driver to travel alone to Sakut and meet up with a man there. A police constable recognizes Helen's car at the garage and follows Elliot back to the motel. He calls Rogers who speeds to the site. As he attempts to arrest Elliot, Lammon arrives on his own initiative as 'back up'. Rogers shoots and kills Lammon. Elliot orders Helen to hide in the closet and emerges with his hands up, stating he let Helen go earlier. Rogers makes Elliot put Lammon's body in the boot of his car and calls Kostas, saying he has Elliot. Kostas laughs and chats with 'Dmitri', who is shown to be an hallucination; Kostas is in the car by himself.
After killing Lammon, Detective Rogers takes Elliot to Kosta. On their way, Rogers reveals that Kosta has taken his wife hostage in order to making him bring Elliot to him. When they reach Kosta, Elliot drinks water from Kosta's bottle that has LSD in it. Kosta asks Elliot about a bag full of money that he had stolen. Soon when all of them ride to the place where Elliot hid the money, Elliot starts hallucinating. It is shown that Kosta also talks with a man who doesn't exist there. When Elliot starts digging for the money, he goes through a series of Psychedelic experiences. There he encounters his various pasts including his father in his death bed, his acquaintance with Kosta and Luci, and Lena Pascal who says that she knows Elliot and is living in Adelaide. When he returns to consciousness, he finds the bag. In the mean time, Helen leads some police officers to a place where, according to Luci, they could find Elliot, but finds out that it's a lie. She then returns to Ethan and decides to leave it all. And Luci arrives and puts Kosta on a video call with his elder brother Dimitri.
Kosta finds out Dimitri is alive, but refuses to accept it. When Elliot and Luci try to kill him to end everything, Luci is shot by Detective Rogers with Kosta being killed. Afterwards Rogers saves his wife. After Luci dies, Elliot hides the bag of money which he had grabbed at Luci's insistence and calls Helen asking for help. When irritated Ethan asks her to choose between him and Elliot, Helen chooses to help Elliot. Now reunited, on their way Helen and Elliot find out that Rogers has reported that they did all the murders and police officers are following them. They take some hostages at a restaurant to get the police to bring Lena Pascal from Adelaide. Helen gathers some photos as evidence and proves that Rogers is lying. After that Elliot is taken to jail where he meets Lena Pascal, who reveals that Elliot is a drug smuggler for whom she worked. Elliot is bailed, but cannot believe that he is not being charged for what he did to Lena. To compensate Sue's loss, Elliot gives the bag of money to her and tries to kill himself or lose his memory again, but is later recovered safe, remembering everything. Learning of Elliot's past, Helen leaves him. The episode ends with a heartbroken Elliot swallowing a bunch of pills and Helen being persuaded to give Elliot a second chance, which she does.
The first episode of this limited series was released in the UK on 1 January 2022.[29] Later all six episodes were released on BBC iPlayer.[30] With an overall view of 18 million on its release, the series became the third most successful drama launch for the iPlayer.[31] As of March 2022, it became the most watched series on iPlayer.[32]
The first episode was watched 6,428,000 times on iPlayer alone during 2022, making it the 3rd most viewed individual programme on the platform that year.[33]
The series was also premiered in Australia the following day on Stan.[34]
It debuted 3 March on HBO Max in the US and Latin America, and on Amazon Prime in Canada.[1]
ZDF released the series on 12 August in Germany.[35]
Reception
Critical response
Series 1
Review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes reported 97% approval based on 33 reviews with an average rating of 7.60/10.[36] The site's critics consensus reads: "Jamie Dornan makes for a compelling guide through The Tourist, a beguiling drama that deepens its mystery with solid shocks and welcome moments of levity."[36] On Metacritic, the show has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100 based on 11 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[37] Critics particularly praised Dornan's[38] and Macdonald's performances.
In a 4/5 stars review, Lucy Mangan wrote in The Guardian: "This outback thriller from the writer of The Missing is fun, stylish and clearly still has many twists up its sleeve."[39] While Ed Cumming of The Independent addressed it as Dornan's best work until then,[40] Lauren Morris in the Radio Times described it as "An unpredictable, edge-of-your-seat mystery that startles you with laugh-out-loud moments of ridiculousness."[41]The Guardian ranked it number 24 on their list of best television shows of 2022.[42] It also became the most-watched drama of 2022 in the UK.[43]
Series 2
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 14 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.60/10. The website's consensus reads: "The Tourist continues to twist and turn towards an unguessable destination, with Jamie Dornan and Danielle Macdonald's palpable performances making the journey wholly worthwhile along the way."[44]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 6 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[45]
In a 4/5 star review in the Evening Standard, Nick Clark praised the writing and said that the second series was "tense, brutal and often laugh-out-loud funny".[46] Awarding it 4/5 stars, Anita Singh of The Daily Telegraph felt that it was funnier than the first series.[47]Adam Sweeting writing for The Arts Desk, said: "Sometimes the Williamses lurch too far in the direction of gratuitous weirdness."[48] He lauded Dornan's performance stating: "But a big hand for Jamie Dornan, who negotiates slings, arrows and blows to the head with good grace, wry humour and quiet authority."[48] Barbara Ellen of The Observer rated it 3/5 stars and said: "the mystical layer that set the initial series apart is largely missing" , but she still found it "strong".[49]
