Someone wakes up in a strange location with no knowledge of who they are while they are pursued by mysterious dangerous forces. As they fight for their life, they try to piece together the truth of their identity. It's a familiar thriller set-up, and the HBO Max limited series The Tourist doesn't reinvent it. Creators Harry and Jack Williams come up with enough unique characters and wild twists to keep the six episodes fresh and entertaining. Ultimately, the more that the initially unnamed amnesiac protagonist (Jamie Dornan) learns about himself, the more the series gets bogged down in exposition and tiresome drama.
Even in the penultimate episode, which is just a huge flood of back story, The Tourist remains lively and fun. Led by an enthusiastic cast delivering sharp dialogue, the first episode opens with a chase right out of Steven Spielberg's Duel. After the protagonist stops at a lone gas station in the middle of the Australian outback, he is pursued along desolate highways by a big rig truck with an unseen driver. The big rig pushes his car off the road. The man wakes up after the crash in a hospital, with no memory of who he is or how he got there.
At first, the only person who seems to care about what happens to him is rookie police officer Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), who's assigned to take the man's statement as her first solo case. She points him in the direction of the tiny town of Burnt Ridge since a note about meeting someone in a diner there is the man's only clue to his identity. Meanwhile, a big, bearded American in a cowboy hat (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) is just a few steps behind the man with ill intentions.
One of the most amusing things about the early episodes of The Tourist is the friendly eagerness of nearly every Australian that the man meets. This includes Helen and the proprietors of the only Bed and Breakfast in Burnt Ridge. The diner waitress Luci Miller (Shalom Brune-Franklin) even offers to escort him to various outback landmarks where he may have stopped before his accident. Of course, some of them are not who they say they are. The Williamses capture the quirky personalities of everyday Australians with charm and humor, filling the dialogue with folksy witticisms.
That humor goes a long way toward setting The Tourist apart, especially when its plot mechanics start to take over in later episodes. As both Helen and Luci help him piece together his past, the man comes under fire not only from the hulking cowboy but also from a hotshot federal police detective (Damon Herriman) and a delusional Greek gangster (Alex Dimitriades). Nearly everything he learns about his past actions and associates is bad, and Dornan effectively conveys the distress of a man discovering that he may have been a very bad person.
Through it all, his only true friend is the pure-hearted Helen. She is determined to prove herself as a police officer worthy of the respect that she doesn't get from her colleagues or her passive-aggressive jerk of a fiance. Dornan is the bigger star, and he gets to show off in the requisite fight scenes as well as in moments of emotional anguish over recovering his memories. However, Macdonald gives an even stronger performance. The Tourist makes Helen essentially its second protagonist, devoting plenty of screen time to her personal life and her journey toward self-actualization. She and Dornan have sweet, believable chemistry, and the creators convincingly develop a low-key love triangle among the man, Helen, and Luci.
Ólafur makes for a menacing villain in the early episodes, although Dimitriades is less compelling as the overall criminal mastermind. Herriman's dogged cop character never quite makes the strong impression that the creators intend. His motivations lose some credibility in the final episodes seemingly for the sole purpose of dragging out the story. The convoluted explanation of the man's background can get a bit tedious, but the Williamses and directors Chris Sweeney and Daniel Nettheim keep even the most exposition-heavy scenes lively with stylistic flourishes and self-aware humor. Sweeney and Nettheim also capture gorgeous views of the Australian outback and bring visual distinctiveness to the dusty, isolated towns.
If the ultimate answers about who the man is and what he's been doing are a bit underwhelming, The Tourist remains an engaging character drama all the way through. The series finds fun nuance even in its boilerplate thriller details, like one character who uses a set of fake passports all with the names of the Spice Girls. It starts with a stock premise and relies on a lot of genre conventions, but the approach is always energetic and enjoyable.
All six episodes of The Tourist premiere Thursday, March 3 on HBO Max.