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HBO Max continues stealth drops of some of the best drama mini-series on television. Last year highlights included “The Head” and “ Station Eleven ,” and they start 2022 strongly with the fantastic “The Tourist,” a twisty tale that plays like an Aussie version of “ Fargo .” With sharp dialogue, clever plotting, and career-best work from Jamie Dornan and Danielle Macdonald , this is a great little thriller, a show that constantly keeps you guessing and entertained in equal measure.

The “ Belfast ” and “ Fifty Shades of Grey ” star plays an unnamed man (at least for a while) who is driving through the very remote Australian outback. He stops at a station to use the bathroom, banters with the guy behind the counter, and hits the road again. Looking in the rearview mirror, he sees a truck gaining on him with remarkable speed. The Man twists off the road to avoid it and the trucker follows, revealing through a POV from his cab that this is very intentional—he’s trying to kill this tourist. They race through the desert until The Man’s car crashes. He wakes up in a hospital with no memory of who he is or how he got there.

Enter a small-town officer named Helen Chambers (Macdonald), engaged to an awful man named Ethan ( Greg Larsen ) and thrust into a mystery about who this handsome Irishman is in a hospital bed. When The Man finds a note with a time and a location in his pocket, he heads to a small town called Burnt Ridge, where he meets a woman named Luci ( Shalom Brune-Franklin ) who might know about his past, ends up crossing paths with a sociopath ( Ólafur Darri Ólafsson ) who clearly wants him dead, and gets a phone call from a man who’s been buried underground. And then things get even weirder.

Created by the people behind the excellent “ The Missing ” (which aired stateside on Starz), the writing on “The Tourist” is a metronomic back and forth between reveals and how those reveals propel the narrative in a new direction. Pushing their way through all the chaos are Dornan and Macdonald, both phenomenal. Dornan finds a quirky, unsettled way to play a man who doesn’t know who he is without resorting to the cliché of the lost soul. If anything, he leans into more of a blank slate interpretation of amnesia, playing a guy who’s more open to what comes next because he can’t remember what came before. And Macdonald is charming and so incredibly likable that she becomes the heart of a show that can be cold at times.

Echoes of “ Memento ” and “Fargo” aside, “The Tourist” also has its own quirky personality. Some of those quirks get a bit extreme in late-season episodes in ways I can’t spoil, but the show is never boring. It’s a reminder that the Dornan who was so great in “ The Fall ” is still out there, and I hope it leads him to more bizarre, challenging roles like this one. There’s an argument to be made that there’s an even-better 100-minute movie in this six-episode mini-series, but that’s not the world we’re in right now. A story like this has a better chance to be told in the TV system than the mid-budget film one, and the writers don’t drag their feet or spin their wheels like so many streaming thrillers. They’re constantly moving our hero forward, keeping us uncertain about his past and even his moral center.

Some will argue that “The Tourist” gets too convoluted and I’ll admit that I enjoyed the playful uncertainty of the first half of the season more than the intensity of the second half. Although the show does get deeper in how it unpacks lies we tell ourselves and those we listen to from other people. It turns out that everyone on "The Tourist" has a secret or two, and almost all of them could use a car accident to reset the hole they've dug for themselves. 

I'm not sure how intentional it is but the show never stopped reminding me of some of my favorite early Coen films—the noir danger of “ Blood Simple ,” the open roads of “ Raising Arizona ” (and a bearded hunter who seems unkillable), Macdonald’s very Marge Gunderson character—and yet these nods to greats are embedded in a breakneck plot that never slows down enough to distract from its own inspired storytelling. Take the trip.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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The Tourist (2022)

360 minutes

Jamie Dornan as The Man

Danielle Macdonald as Helen Chambers

Shalom Brune-Franklin as Luci

Damon Herriman as D.I. Lachlan Rogers

Alex Dimitriades as Kostas

Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as Billy

Greg Larsen as Ethan Krum

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• Daniel Nettheim

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'The Tourist' doesn't know who he is — just that someone wants him dead

John Powers

In The Tourist, "The Man" (Jamie Dornan) wakes up in a small town hospital in the Australian outback with no idea who he is or how he got there. HBO hide caption

In The Tourist, "The Man" (Jamie Dornan) wakes up in a small town hospital in the Australian outback with no idea who he is or how he got there.

Ever since the birth of mass communications, our culture has been haunted by the idea of amnesia. In high-class books by the likes of George Orwell or Milan Kundera , forgetting becomes a political metaphor for the erasure of truth. Things are less ambitious in pop entertainments like Memento or the Jason Bourne series . There, memory-loss is less a metaphor than a motor — a gimmick to drive the story forward.

This motor purrs like a Ferrari in The Tourist , a hit BBC series playing on HBO Max. Written by the Williams brothers, Harry and Jack — best known here for The Missing and Baptiste — this funny, suspenseful six-part thriller doesn't merely keep us guessing. It keeps its amnesiac hero guessing, too. He knows even less about his own story than we do.

A bearded, muscled-up Jamie Dornan stars as a T-shirt clad Irishman who gets in a car accident and winds up in a small town hospital in the Australian outback. Known simply as "The Man," he doesn't know who he is or how he got there. But soon after he leaves the hospital, he knows one thing for sure: Somebody wants to kill him.

As he seeks to find out who's after him and why, he's helped by two very different women. Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin) is a waitress who we aren't quite sure what to make of. In contrast, it's easy to trust probationary constable Helen Chambers, played by Danielle Macdonald. Helen's a newbie cop who struggles with her weight and with a fiancé who speaks of her appearance with such passive-aggressive meanness that I kept hoping he'd become one of the show's murder victims.

While The Man's search for his identity is grippingly plotted, the show lets the action breathe. It takes time to enjoy his encounters with a wide range of oddball types, be it a goofy chess-playing pilot, a Greek mobster, the affably nutty woman who offers him lodging, or the enormous, cowboy-hatted hitman who has the self-satisfied theatricality of an escapee from a Tarantino movie. That said, The Man knows he must keep moving to stay alive.

For all The Tourist 's inventiveness — Episode 5 is a trip — it reminds us that even good pop culture is often derivative. The show's opening car crash sequence mimics the Steven Spielberg movie Duel . More importantly, the Williams brothers are pretty clearly doing a Down Under riff on Fargo . Their series offers the same blend of violence and barbed humor, the same mythologizing of bleak, underpopulated places, and the same cavalcade of viciousness and folly that brings out the heroism in an ordinary person.

The show's moral center is Helen, who, in Macdonald's sensational performance, has our sympathy from the get-go. Her work is so scene-stealingly good that I would call this a career-making performance if I hadn't already said this about Macdonald's electric work as an aspiring New Jersey rapper in the indie film Patti Cake$ .

Helen's transparent goodness makes her the perfect counterpoint to The Man, a handsome hunk who's a mystery, even to himself. It's a great role for Dornan, who, earlier in his career, had a slightly synthetic prettiness that made him ideal for creepy characters like the S&M billionaire in Fifty Shades of Grey . Here, he's a bit older, thicker, and rougher. And just as Brad Pitt often seems liberated when his good looks are masked a bit, Dornan gives his best performance as a man who isn't sure whether or not he's the hero of his own life.

Over the course of the six episodes, The Man struggles to learn whether, back before his accident, he was a good guy or a bad guy. And if he had been a villain, does he have to stay one, even after he starts remembering his past? I won't reveal what he discovers, though I feel obligated to say that you won't get a definitive answer this season. You'll have to watch Season 2 of The Tourist , not yet made, which I bet you will be more than happy to do.

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The Tourist

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Watch The Tourist with a subscription on Netflix.

Cast & Crew

Jamie Dornan

Danielle Macdonald

Helen Chambers

Shalom Brune-Franklin

Luci Miller

Ólafur Darri Ólafsson

Billy Nixon

Geneviève Lemon

Danny Adcock

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A thought-provoking mystery akin to the likes of Christopher Nolan's Memento , The Tourist hit the BBC back in January 2022, with its critical and public acclaim across the pond soon translating into praise in the US following its debut on HBO Max. A whirlwind adventure that also showcases its gorgeous Australian backdrop, it came as no surprise to many when the series was picked up for a second outing . However, Max shockingly dropped the show from their catalog, with Netflix swooping in and saving the day, providing the upcoming second season with a rightful home. With that in mind, here is a look at some of the incredible cast of characters The Tourist has to offer.

The Tourist

When a man wakes up in the Australian outback with no memory, he must use the few clues he has to discover his identity before his past catches up with him.

• Jamie Dornan

The Man/Elliot Stanley

Known initially only as The Man, The Tourist begins with this mysterious stranger ominously waking up in an Australian hospital with a severe case of amnesia. Although it soon becomes clear his real name is Elliot Stanley, the gripping puzzle surrounding his identity creates the backbone of the show as Stanley's troubled Irish past swiftly begins to catch up with him. As the series continues, Dornan becomes a pensive, steadfast action hero, although, unlike a series such as Reacher , this masculine lead is allowed the time to be vulnerable, thrusting the classic male hero into a progressive 2024 role model. In Season 2, The Man has traveled back to his home country with filming in Dublin beginning in 2023 .

With a screen career that dates back to Sofia Coppola 's Marie Antoinette in 2006, Jamie Dornan 's rise to the top has been swift, with his portrayal of Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades franchise solidifying him as a household name. Among his high-profile career to date, Dornan has starred alongside Cillian Murphy in the World War Two spy thriller Anthropoid , portrayed the spiritual precursor to Ryan Gosling's Ken in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar , and acted opposite Gillian Anderson in the tense crime thriller The Fall . A captivating performer with an eye-catching range, Dornan is merely at the beginning of what looks to be an incredible career with many an iconic role still to come. Dornan discussed his time on the series and more in an interview with Collider's Christina Radish back in 2022.

Danielle McDonald

Helen chambers.

Helen's face is the first The Man sees following his sudden awakening, with that moment cementing her as a crucial component to the enigma's journey. At the bottom of the professional ladder, Helen Chambers will stop at nothing to prove she is an expert law enforcement officer, although sometimes her dedication to her job, and specifically the case involving The Man, puts her livelihood and her marriage in jeopardy, which eventually leads to a surprising and show-stealing romance with The Man.

With a career that has only spanned just over a decade to date, Danielle McDonald has already made a name for herself, with both the public and critics alike regularly praising her impressive range of performances. From her beginning on Glee in 2011 through to American Horror Story , McDonald has delighted on the small screen, but perhaps her film work in the likes of Bird Box and Patti Cake$ showcases the best of her talents. To find out more about the actress and her thoughts on playing Helen Chambers in The Tourist , check out her interview with Collider's Christina Radish .

Victoria Haralabidou

Lena pascal.

Lena's journey in The Tourist 's first season is as unique as they come, first appearing as a vision in the dreams (or nightmares) of The Man. As time goes by, these visions become stronger and more detailed, with the puzzle of Lena's identity slowly being pieced together. By season's end, it becomes clear that Lena marks the darkest secret from The Man's past, with Season 2 likely to involve The Man's attempts at redemption.

A star of both stage and screen, the Russian-born Victoria Haralabidou has impressed immensely across a 25-year-long acting career, with highlights including the likes of Brides , The Secrets She Keeps , and The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart . In the near future, Haralabidou will be playing Jacinta Brightface in two episodes of Zombie Therapy .

Shalom Brune-Franklin

Luci miller.

Luci Miller's part in the plot of The Tourist 's first season is critical, with the waitress helping The Man piece together his past in the hope of protecting his future. However, Luci is hiding secrets of her own, with her growing bond with The Man soon seeming to have an ulterior motive. Sadly, Luci's involvement in the story is limited to just the first season, but her influence on the second season's plot shouldn't be underestimated.

A young actress with the world at her feet, Shalom Brune-Franklin , although she has a cameo role in Thor: Ragnarok , is best known for her work on television. Whether it's The Tourist , Doctor Doctor , Bad Mothers , or Line of Duty , Shalom never looks out of place alongside actors twice her age, with her future certainly looking bright.

Greg Larsen

Ethan Krum is the fiancée of Helen Chambers and symbolizes the familial cost of the young policewoman's dedication to her profession. A patient and kind man at heart, and never far from a moment of absurdist comic relief, watching Ethan slowly lose faith in the woman he loves is heartbreaking, with The Tourist 's dedication to showcasing both the mystery at its center and the ripple effects of such a tough task one of its best features. Interestingly, despite Helen and The Man now being a romantic item, Ethan is confirmed to appear in Season 2.

Perhaps the most experienced actor in The Tourist 's talented cast, Greg Larsen is a legendary Australian performer with a back catalog that includes the likes of Hug the Sun , How Not to Behave , and Young Rock .

The second season of The Tourist will officially premiere on February 29 on Netflix , with the trailer available to watch above. All episodes of The Tourist Season 1 are available to stream right now on Netflix.

Watch on Netflix

• Entertainment
• Why <i>The Tourist</i> Should Be Your Next Netflix Binge–And What to Know Before Watching

Why The Tourist Should Be Your Next Netflix Binge–And What to Know Before Watching

T ake a break from endlessly scrolling through Netflix searching for something new to watch and just press play on The Tourist, the BBC series which stars Jamie Dornan as a mysterious Irishman who wakes up in an Australian hospital with amnesia.

The wry thriller isn’t necessarily new—it premiered on the BBC in 2022 and quickly became one of the U.K.’s most-watched dramas of that year—but it is a recent addition to Netflix, which acquired the exclusive rights to the series last year and started streaming it in February. (Season 1 of The Tourist was previously available to stream in the U.S. on Max.) 

At just six episodes, The Tourist is a low-risk, high-reward viewing experience full of twists and turns that are sure to keep you on your toes. Think Memento if directed by the Coen Brothers . Even better, if you like what you see, you can launch right into season 2, which is now streaming.

Here is what you need to know about your next great Netflix binge . 

What is The Tourist about?

The Tourist begins with an Irish guy (played by Dornan) making a pit stop at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, Australia. Nothing seems too out of the ordinary; he fills up his car, questions the gas station attendant’s bathroom key policy, visits the absolutely filthy restroom, and is on his way. But things get weird once he gets back on the road. He finds himself being harassed by a tractor trailer that seems hellbent on mowing him down. Just when it appears that he’s in the clear, he’s T-boned by the truck and left for dead on the side of the dirt road. 

When he wakes up, he’s in the hospital and has no memory of the accident or who he is. He doesn’t have a wallet or ID or phone on him to help jog his memory. This nameless man is now a tourist in his own life, struggling to understand who he was and why someone wanted him dead so badly. With help from a few kind, but not necessarily trustworthy strangers including Probationary Constable Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), local waitress Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin), and Detective Inspector Lachlan Rogers (Damon Herriman), he embarks on a journey of self-discovery that leaves him with more questions than answers about his dark past. 

Why it’s worth your time

Let’s start with Jamie Dornan. He played the leading man in the Fifty Shades trilogy and the Academy Award-nominated 2021 drama Belfast , but The Tourist feels like the first time he’s been able to truly show his range as an actor. It’s hard to resist that Irish brogue, but it’s even harder to resist his “ get you a man that can do both ” charm. Fans of the superbly silly Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar already know how funny he can be—not to mention, what a great singer he is. But The Tourist lets him show off his dry, dark wit, while also letting him show off his romantic side. By the end of the series, you’ll be left wondering why he hasn’t yet been cast in a good rom-com. (Sorry, not sorry Wild Mountain Thyme .) In the show’s most gripping action sequences, he manages to channel another amnesiac with killer instincts, Jason Bourne. But thanks to his hangdog expression, Dornan is also able to pull off the existential dread his character feels after realizing he’s not the person he hoped he would be.

Obviously, it’s hard to take your eyes off Dornan, but the scenery in The Tourist isn’t too bad to look at either. The show, set in the Australian outback—like way, way out back—was filmed on location in South Australia around Adelaide, a city known for its coastline. (Adelaide's North Haven Beach serves as the show’s stand-in for Bali’s Kuta Beach.) It was also shot in the Flinders Ranges , the largest mountain ranges in South Australia, and in Peterborough, a small town in an area near Adelaide known as wheat country, which stood in for the sandy outback scenes. (Season 2 takes place in Ireland, so prepare yourself for greenery as far as the eye can see.) Despite all the drama onscreen, The Tourist makes Australia look like a nice place to visit.

What to remember before watching The Tourist season 2

Whether you’ve already finished the first season and need a bit of a refresher or you’re planning to skip straight to Season 2, this is what you need to know before watching the second season. 

Warning: major spoilers for The Tourist Season 1 ahead.

The Irish guy with amnesia is actually Elliot Stanley, and he’s done some really bad things in his life. 

While in the hospital, Elliot finds a note in his pants pocket with an address for a diner in a tiny town called Burnt Ridge. It’s there he meets Luci (Brune-Franklin), a waitress who is actually his ex-girlfriend. She only chooses to tell him his name and their relationship to one another after they discover a man’s dead body stashed in an oil drum that had been buried. The man was Marko (Damien Strouthos), who, like Elliot, worked for Kostas (Alex Dimitriades), an international drug lord and Luci’s fiancé.

Luci isn’t exactly who she claims to be. She’s a scammer who stole a rather sentimental bag of money from Kostas in order to run off with Elliot. Now the Greek gangster is back to collect. But Kostas isn’t all that interested in the cash; a million dollars is chump change to a guy like him. This is about ego. Kostas, a maniac who spikes his water with LSD to be able to speak with his dead brother, wants to punish Elliot for successfully stealing his girl.

Kostas decides to kidnap the wife of Detective Inspector Lachlan Rogers (Herriman) in hopes that it will scare the decorated officer into doing his bidding. It does; Lachlan apprehends Elliot and kills a young sergeant in the process, becoming one of the bad guys. But is Elliot also a bad guy? Probationary Constable Helen Chambers (Macdonald), the ambitious cop-in-training assigned to his case, doesn’t think so. She believes the fact that he was willing to save her from being shot by Kostas’ henchman means there is good in there somewhere, even if he has done bad things. But Elliot isn’t convinced that someone can really change. 

After drinking from Kostas’ LSD-laced water bottle, he has visions that offer some insight into who he may have been. He sees his first meeting with Kostas, where he’s hired as his accountant. He is able to relive his meet-cute with Luci and sees how toxic their relationship was. He discovers where he buried the bag of money and dreams of laying in bed with Helen. He also speaks to a Russian woman named Lena Pascal, who he’s seen before in his dreams. She tells him she’s in Adelaide and claims that she can help him “fill in the colors” of his past. 

Elliot worries that what he has seen aren’t memories, but hallucinations. When he finds the bag of money in the same spot he had envisioned it though, he believes that Lena may be real, too. Unfortunately, he can’t go looking for her just yet. After Kostas and Luci are killed in a shootout over the million dollars, Lachlan lies to the police in hopes of saving himself. He claims that Elliot and Helen kidnapped him and went on a shooting rampage à la Bonnie and Clyde, killing the young sergeant. Luckily, Helen is able to access the CCTV footage that shows Lachlan transporting Elliot in handcuffs, catching him in his lie. It saves both her and Elliott from going to jail and allows Elliot a chance to speak with Lena, who was not a figment of his imagination—though after their chat he wishes she was.

When Lena comes to meet him at the jail, she reveals that he wasn’t just Kostas’ accountant as he had dreamt, but helped train the drug mules, mostly young immigrant women who swallowed bags of heroin to transport across the globe. Lena tells a story of two girls who died instantly after the bags Elliot gave them exploded in their stomachs. Lena lived, but not without literal scars. She shows him the long gash across her stomach where she was cut open to retrieve the drugs. She claims Elliot was the one who ordered her to be butchered, worried the heroin would go to waste. He apologizes for his cruelty, but she doesn’t absolve him of his guilt. “You have to live with yourself,” she tells him as she leaves.

Elliot doesn’t think he can and attempts to have himself arrested, but Lena won’t press charges. He then attempts to lose his memory again by getting into another car crash. He flips his car over, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work. He can’t forget what Lena told him and neither can Helen, who after learning the evil that Elliot was capable of decides she can no longer see him. But she can’t stop thinking about him and wondering whether he or anyone should be defined by their worst mistakes. 

Elliot wonders the same, but the guilt is just too much. He decides that he can no longer live with himself and attempts to take his life with vodka and pills. Laid out on his bed, waiting to die, he gets a text: a burrito emoji from Helen.

The burrito references a scene earlier in the show, when Elliot and Helen were eating together in a Mexican restaurant. Helen is his hostage, but the night plays out like a first date. Elliot can’t remember what kind of food he likes so she suggests they order everything on the menu so he can figure out his taste now. She encourages him to stop thinking about who he was and start becoming the person he is meant to be. He later tells her that he equates burritos with happiness and her text becomes a lifeline. He might not be able to forget what he’s done, but she believes he has the capacity to change. The joy on his face when he sees her message makes it seem as if Elliot finally believes he can change too. But fans will have to wait until Season 2 to see if he’s able to become a better person.

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Series / The Tourist

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The Tourist is a Mystery Thriller TV drama written by Harry and Jack Williams and produced in part by The BBC as well as several other international companies. The first series, consisting of six episodes, was broadcast in 2022.

Jamie Dornan plays a man, initially known only as "The Man", who is involved in a car crash in the Australian Outback , and subsequently wakes up in hospital with complete amnesia. Using what limited clues he has, and with the help of a friendly local police officer called Helen (Danielle Macdonald), he tries to find out who he is . As the plot develops and various unsavoury characters start to take in interest in The Man, it becomes increasingly clear that his past is much, much murkier than first assumed.

For a time, it was the most-watched show on the BBC's iPlayer streaming platform, with the first episode ending up as the third most-watched individual programme on iPlayer in 2022.

This led to an originally-unplanned second series, in which The Man and Helen travel to Ireland to find out more about the former's past. It was broadcast in 2024.

The Tourist tropes:

• All Just a Dream : The first part of the fifth episode of the second series, in which Helen and Elliot return to Australia, only for Helen's insistence on finding out the story behind the missing plane to put a strain on their relationship, is revealed to have been the dream Helen is having while in a coma as a result of being shot in the stomach by Lena .
• Does Helen really think that St. Petersburg in Florida is the St. Petersburg where the Winter Palace is? See below under Global Ignorance for more.
• When Elliot and Helen wake up in bed together after getting drunk the previous night, it's unclear whether or not they had sex; Helen swears they went no further than kissing, although as she had consumed several dirty martinis after trying said cocktail for the first time, she may not remember everything .
• Did DS Slater murder his wife, or is he telling the truth about her dying of natural causes and him being too grief-stricken to report her death, leading him to conceal her body in the basement ?
• Amnesiac Dissonance : As Elliot learns more about his past, he becomes increasingly horrified and disgusted by the dubious and violent life he's led, which included being involved in organized crime. It comes to a head in the finale when he learns that not only was he an accountant for a drug-dealer, he was actively involved in coercing women into smuggling heroin across borders in their stomachs, and was thus responsible for the deaths of at least two of those women.
• Amnesia Loop : Played for laughs in the first episode. The first time the Man visits a gas station and is told by the attendant that he must sign the register to get the key to the outside toilet, he reacts with an incredulous "Why would you need to sign for it? It's not like you're trying to buy it". He says the same thing when he revisits the gas station after getting amnesia.
• Armour-Piercing Question : When Elliot has Frank McDonnell at gunpoint, he seems serious about killing him. Frank then asks why he would want to do this, given that he has no memory of the feud between their families and had stated that he does not care about said feud — meaning that if he did kill Frank, he would be doing so for no reason whatsoever. Elliot backs down as a result .
• Bait-and-Switch : Lena, who turns out to have been the one who lured Elliot back to Ireland , asks Donal if she can be the one to shoot Elliot after he and Helen are captured (again, in Elliot's case) by the McDonnells . Donal agrees, but instead of shooting Elliot as everyone expects, she shoots Helen , so Elliot can know the pain of watching a loved one die in front of him .
• Basement Dweller : In the second series, Ruairi Slater provides a somewhat creepy example of this trope, given that the basement in question contains the decomposing body of his late wife and a mannequin dressed in her clothes .
• Big Bad : In the first series, combined with The Don in the case of Kosta — an international drug dealer who has one of Australia's best cops (Rogers) on his payroll. He's after The Man because he used to be a key man in Kosta's organisation before he ran off with $1,000,000 and Luci, who had previously been Kosta's girlfriend .
• Big Beautiful Woman : Helen. She's (adorkably) smart, too.
• In the aftermath of the diner blowing up, The Man necks a beer and follows it by remarking that he hopes he's not an alcoholic.
• When he gets kidnapped at the start of the second series, Elliot asks his kidnappers if this has anything to do with Kosta. They, having not heard of the Big Bad of the first series, are momentarily confused as to why them kidnapping someone would have anything to do with a coffee shop (Costa Coffee being a leading British chain of coffee shops, with over a hundred outlets in Ireland).
• Elliot's attempt to get away from his kidnappers in the first episode of the second series is accompanied by "Don't Get Me Wrong" by The Pretenders , which is playing on the radio of the kidnappers' van.
• Brick Joke : Everyone who goes to the gas station reacts with incredulity on learning that the proprietor makes visitors sign a register before allowing them to use the outside toilet.
• British Brevity : Two series, six episodes in each.
• Broken Ace : Detective Inspector Lachlan Rogers, although most Aussie cops just see him as The Ace as he does not appear to have told anyone about his terminal cancer diagnosis. Turns out, he's also a Dirty Cop who works for Kosta.
• Buried Alive : The fate of The Man's mystery caller at the end of the first episode. He and Luci rush to find him, but a sandstorm impedes their progress, and by the time they find him, he's dead.
• The Bus Came Back : As well as The Man and Helen, Ethan and Lena return for the second series. Billy also appears, but only in the coma dream Helen has after getting shot by Lena.
• Career Versus Man : Helen, who has recently become a police officer, is engaged to Ethan, who tries to convince her to give up on her new career. Given that he's a Gaslighting Jerkass , it comes as something of a relief when she finally dumps him . By the start of the second series, though, she is revealed to have quit the police in order to go travelling with Elliot, who's now her boyfriend .
• When Billy breaks a window, the camera focuses on a particular shard of glass. He is later killed as a result of being impaled on that very shard .
• Elliot's lighter, which offends the ticket inspector on the train, is later used to enable Elliot to make a Molotov cocktail in a bid to escape from the McDonnells .
• Ethan's rape whistle gets used to distract a heavy who's got Elliot at his mercy .
• Ethan again; although the fact that he has an app on his phone that tracks Helen's movements is rightly called out as stalking, it does help him and Elliot to try and find Helen when she goes missing .
• In the second series, Ruairi's next-door neighbour seems like a one-shot character but is actually this, as she's later revealed to be the widow of the real Elliot Stanley .
• Chekhov's Skill : Early on, it's mentioned that prior to interviewing The Man, Helen's police experience consists entirely of being a traffic cop. Ultimately, her speed camera spotting skills are what saves her and Elliot from being framed for murder.
• Cruel Mercy : In the final episode of the first series, Elliot finds out about the horrible things he did to Lena and her friends. He is willing to go to jail for it but Lena declines to talk to the cops. Having noticed that he has developed a conscience, she figures out that the guilt he will suffer for the rest of his life is the worst punishment she can offer him; prison would merely help him to assuage that guilt, and she wants him to have to live with it .
• DI Rogers has been diagnosed with cancer and is actually working for Kosta.
• Helen tried to kill herself after her father died. Ethan uses this as a means of convincing her that she should marry him because no other man would have her.
• And as for The Man ... Elliot was not just an accountant for Kosta's drug-smuggling operation, he was a key figure in that operation , coercing Lena and at least two other women to have their stomachs cut open in order to smuggle bags of heroin into Australia; the other two died after the bags exploded. When he learns of this, he's so disgusted that he tries to kill himself. Twice . In the second series, he finds out that he was a member of one of the two Feuding Families , and left Ireland after getting the wife of a member of the other family pregnant .
• The Determinator : Helen, especially in the second series.
• Didn't Think This Through : In his attempt to make amends with Helen (and, he hopes, win her back with his idea of a Grand Romantic Gesture ) in the second series, Ethan does not seem to have considered the notion that she has moved on. Unlike her, he hires a car when he gets to Ireland (she, by contrast, has to rely on taxis) but does not consider the prospect that it may need to be refuelled at some point.
• Driven to Suicide : On learning of the extent of his criminality, Elliot tries to kill himself, first by trying to crash his car, and when that doesn't work, he tries overdosing on what is presumably paracetamol .
• A Family Affair : An accidental example. When The Man had an affair with (and impregnated) Donal's wife Claire, he did not know that he and Donal were cousins .
• Feuding Families : The Cassidys and the McDonnells have been feuding for many years and the situation has been made worse by the fact that they both run extensive criminal networks competing for control of the local criminal underworld. They have been at an uneasy peace since Joe Cassidy was killed but Elliot's return to Ireland starts the violence up again. It turns out that the heads of the two families are actually brother and sister .
• Fighting Irish : In the second series, we have the Cassidys and the McDonnells , two feuding Irish criminal families. The Man is shown to be more than capable of handling himself in a Bar Brawl .
• Fish out of Water : The Man is an Irishman who (initially) has no idea who he is, or why he's in Australia. In the second series, Helen takes on this role as an Aussie visiting Ireland and trying to find Elliot, who's been kidnapped .
• Foreshadowing : In the final episode, Helen spots a speed limit sign and slows down to obey it. This foreshadows her use of her speed camera knowledge to prove that DI Rogers is lying.
• Gaslighting : Ethan constantly belittles Helen, makes her think that no other man would want her and mocks her for thinking she can make a success of being a police officer.
• Global Ignorance : When her conversation with The Man shifts from her and Ethan's intended honeymoon plans to travel in general, Helen remarks that she'd love to see the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg; given that she had just mentioned that they were going to go to Florida (which has a city of that name, named after the Russian original), it seems that she may have fallen victim to this trope. It's an ambiguous case , though, since she specifically mentioned where Ethan wanted to go when she mentioned Florida, and it's never confirmed whether or not she knows that the St. Petersburg where the Winter Palace is is actually the Russian one note  this omission in detail may be partially justified as a possible hint that her personal wishes normally take a backseat to Ethan's in their rather one-sided relationship, and thus she rarely has a chance to actually express them in discussion since they'd be irrelevant (to him); given how switched-on she turns out to be, it does seem unlikely that she would fall victim to this trope . It's possible that she simply assumes that The Man (with whom she shares the conversation) already understands the geographical distinction.
• Gruesome Grandparent : Niamh intended to kill her biological grandson, Fergal, because he was raised by and aligned with the McDonnells .
• Heel Realization : By the second series, Ethan seems to have realised how his behaviour affected Helen (to the point of joining a self-help group and correcting both himself and others over causal remarks that could be seen as misogynistic) and tries to make amends — although this is played for laughs to an extend, given that he quickly becomes The Load .
• Hidden Depths : Elliot is said to have been an accomplished ballet dancer as a younger man. He remembers nothing of this, but is shown to be a very good dancer in the final scene when Helen insists on hiring out a theatre to see what he can do .
• I Have Many Names : The Man finds out that his name is Elliot Stanley . It is, however, revealed in the second series that this was an alias, and his real name is Eugene Cassidy .
• Imaginary Friend : A somewhat sinister version. Kosta's brother Dimitri turns out to be an hallucination of the man Kostas thought he'd grow up to become; he thinks he died years ago, but in reality he's living in an ashram in India.
• Incest Is Relative : The second series ends with it being revealed that the Cassidys and the McDonnells are related due to the adultery of at least one earlier generation. Ethan makes a remark about incest, following which he quickly leaves the pub before someone beats him up for pointing this out .
• Insistent Terminology : Probationary Constable Helen Chambers.
• I Reject Your Reality : After The Reveal at the end of the second series, Niamh angrily refuses to accept that she is a half-sister of her sworn enemy .
• Jerkass : Ethan (Helen's fiancé), who constantly belittles her over he weight and tries to convince her that she's not good enough to be a police officer. She eventually calls him out on this, and dumps him.
• Kissing Cousins : Albeit unknowingly. Before leaving Ireland, Eugene Cassidy (a.k.a. Elliot Stanley, a.k.a. The Man) had an affair with Frank McDonnell 's daughter-in-law and fathered a child with her. Turns out, Frank is Eugene's biological uncle.
• Land Down Under : In the first series, the action takes place in the Australian Outback.
• Loss of Identity : Jamie Dornan's character can't remember his name or where he comes from or why he was in the Australian Outback to begin with. For the majority of the first episode he doesn't even get a temporary name, instead just continuing on nameless. In the credits, he is simply "The Man".
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe : Elliot is revealed, via DNA evidence from the kidnapping scene, to be the biological father of Fergal McDonnell . Later, it is revealed that Niamh was likely fathered by Frank McDonnell 's dad, making them half-siblings. Evidently, sleeping with the wives of enemy family members was an ongoing thing in the Cassidy- McDonnell feud .
• Mistaken for Murderer : When Ruairi goes to a hardware store and buys a shovel, some duct tape and a pair of heavy-duty rubber gloves, the cashier jokingly asks if he's murdered someone and is trying to dispose of the body. Ruairi's laughing response seems a little too forced, given that the second part of the question is, in fact, true .
• Police Are Useless : In season 2, the local Irish police turn out to be useless because they refuse to investigate any crime that might involve the Cassidys or the McDonnells .
• Quest for Identity : The whole basis of the plot is The Man trying to find out who he is, and where he was going before the crash.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending : The first series ends with Elliot, having just washed a load of pills down with vodka in a second attempt to kill himself, receiving a text from Helen, who had previously told him she wanted nothing more to do with him after learning of his criminal past. He smiles as the scene cuts to black for the closing credits.
• Relationship Upgrade : By the start of the second series, Elliot and Helen are in a relationship .
• At the end of the third episode, Luci tells The Man that his name is Elliot Stanley .
• Season 2 reveals that he is Eugene Cassidy and Elliot Stanley was just an alias.
• The climax of season 2 reveals that the heads of the the Cassidy and McDonnell families are half-siblings .
• The final scene of season 2 reveals that The Man/Elliot/Eugene might have actually been an undercover police officer .
• Revenge by Proxy : Lena shoots Helen in the stomach so The Man will have to live with the pain of watching a loved one die, just like she did. Fortunately Helen survives the ordeal .
• Everyone reacts with bewilderment because the owner of the gas station insists on people signing a register before he will give them the key to the outside toilet.
• The question "What shoots but doesn't kill?" is asked several times throughout the series and every time is responded to with the same incorrect, if logical, answer.
• The crux of the first season is revealed to link to a drug empire that runs throughout the Australian outback, where the drugs are smuggled into the country in the stomachs of trafficked drug mules, and then distributed under the supervision of "Big" Billy Nixon (a stereotypical Texan who dresses like a cowboy), who uses his long-distance trucking company to secretly smuggle the drugs. Likewise whilst it implied the ring leader, the international Greek crime boss Kosta is based and regularly operates in more urban surroundings, he has several traits in common with the country setting, such as being introduced out boar hunting in the woods which he'd done since boyhood.
• Season two introduces the Cassady's (for whom the Man happens to be a member , an Irish Mob crime family who, whilst their territory extends into the nearby towns, are based within a small village in largely rural Ireland. Niamh Cassidy 's men dress like labourers and she possesses massive amounts of sway and support in the local community, partially due to her reinvesting her profits within it. This stands in contrast to their rivals the McDonnel's who use a whiskey distillery in town they own as their base and have a more urban and sophisticated presentation (something Niamh even mocks when rallying her troops whilst holding a meeting at her base of operations, her families pub).
• Saved by Canon : Viewers watching the first series from mid-to-late 2023 onwards must surely have been aware that The Man and Helen would survive, given that it was widely reported that Jamie Dornan and Danielle Macdonald were filming the second series.
• Serial Homewrecker : In season 1, The Man learns that he had previously run off with Kosta's girlfriend, Luci . Then in season 2 he discovers that he had an affair with Donal McDonnell 's wife and is the biological father of Fergal McDonnell . Both of these revelations have massive consequences for the plot.
• When The Man is revisits the gas station he was at just before the crash, he's revealed to have signed his name as " "Crocodile" Dundee " on the toilet register.
• When they go on the run, The Man and Helen are compared to Bonnie and Clyde and Thelma & Louise .
• When trying to explain the Cassidy- McDonnell feud to Helen, Ruairi asks her if she has heard of Hatfields & McCoys .
• Although it's not mentioned outright, Ruairi himself exhibits behaviour similar to that of Norman Bates .
• Stuff Blowing Up : The diner in the first episode, which The Man visits because there was a note in the pocket of his jeans telling him to be there at a certain time. Luci (who is later revealed to have written the note) ushers him out just before the explosion.
• Terminally-Ill Criminal : DI Lachlan Rogers, formerly an exemplary detective , upon discovering he had six months left to live from terminal stomach cancer, turned to moonlighting as an enforcer for Kosta so that he could acquire enough money to ensure his wife was looked after for the rest of her life.
• There Is Only One Bed : The Man sleeps on the floor of the honeymoon suite after he and Helen enjoy a drunken meal while on the run. Becomes a case of What Did I Do Last Night? when they both wake up in the bed the following morning, although Helen swears they just kissed.
• Time Skip : The second series begins some 14 months after the first series ends.
• Token Good Teammate : Fergal is by far the least evil of the McDonnells , and really isn't cut out for the life of crime he was born into.
• The Unreveal : We never learn Luci's real name. Even Victoria, the name Elliot knew her by pre-amnesia, was another alias.
• What Did I Do Last Night? : Elliot and Helen wake up in bed together after getting drunk while on the run. She swears they just kissed, although she may not remember everything from the night before .
• What Happened to the Mouse? : After Elliot escapes from the island , we hear no more of Orla McDonnell .
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"? : The Man queries why Donal's parents named him thusly, given that their surname was McDonnell . Lena later expresses surprise at there being so many Donal McDonnells listed in the Irish phonebooks.
• Would Hit a Girl : Donal McDonnell was a wife-beater even before he found out that his wife Claire had slept with Elliot .
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me! : When Helen goes to the airport, she's shocked to encounter Ethan and Ruairi, who are planning to visit Budapest together.
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How to watch The Tourist season 2 — all episodes available now

Trouble finds Elliott in Ireland in the hit show’s second season

Watch The Tourist season 2 stream FREE

Watch from anywhere, the tourist season 2 episode guide and schedule, the tourist season 2 full cast.

• Watch trailer

The Tourist season 2 is here. Emmy-nominated heartthrob Jamie Dornan returned to our screens in January as Elliott Stanley, a man we first found in an Australian hospital with no recollection of who he was, or why everyone wanted him dead. Season 2 shifted the action from Oz to the Emerald Isle as Elliott and Helen (Danielle Macdonald) made ever more troubling discoveries about Elliott’s past.

Read on below for how to watch The Tourist season 2 online for free. And, should you find yourself away from home, you can stream the series stream the series from anywhere with a VPN .

Release date and time:  The Tourist season 2 released early January in the U.K. with all 6 episodes available now on BBC iPlayer. ►  FREE STREAM —   BBC iPlayer (U.K.) ►  Watch anywhere — Try ExpressVPN 100% risk free

The Tourist, created by siblings Harry and Jack Williams, the Emmy-winning producers of The Missing and Fleabag, was the most watched drama of 2022 in the UK and a hit internationally, with season 2 proving just as popular domestically. 

After learning some hard home truths about our amnesiac anti-hero, did Elliott manage to balance the karmic scales this season? No spoilers here of course, but we can say that season 2, saw Helen escort him to his native Ireland where they found themselves unwittingly in the middle of a bitter family feud and also hunted by brand new enemies.

Yet, as Niamh Cassidy (Joyride’s Olwen Fouéré) cautioned Helen in the series' trailer, “You don’t know him sweetheart. You don’t even know his real name.”

The second outing also welcomed Conor MacNeill (Industry), Diarmaid Murtagh (Vikings), and Francis Magee (Kin) to the cast, and delivered even bigger twists and turns than the first season of this compelling crime drama series. Read our guide below for how to watch The Tourist season 2 online and from anywhere in the world.

How to watch The Tourist season 2 online and FREE with BBC iPlayer

The Tourist season 2 arrived on BBC iPlayer in January, and all 6 episodes out now to stream at your leisure.

Of course, if you’re watching The Tourist on BBC iPlayer, you’ll need a valid TV license.

Travelling outside the U.K.? Don't worry — as we explain below, you can watch it live or on-demand when you download a VPN.

How to watch The Tourist season 2 online from anywhere with a VPN

Currently traveling in a country where BBC iPlayer isn’t available? With the right VPN (Virtual private network), you can continue to access your usual platforms and watch your favorite shows online no matter where in the world you are.

We've evaluated many options, and the  best VPN is  ExpressVPN . It meets the VPN needs of the vast majority of users, offering outstanding compatibility with most devices and impressive connection speeds. It's also affordable at $12.95 per month. (Signing up for longer periods of six months or a year reduces the cost even more down to a minimum of $6.67).

Safety, speed and simplicity combine to make ExpressVPN our favorite VPN service. It's also compatible with loads of devices and there's a 30-day money-back guarantee if you want to try it out.

Check out the 12-month plan for the best value.

Using a VPN is incredibly simple.

1. Install the VPN of your choice . As we've said, ExpressVPN is our favorite.

2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN app. For instance if you're in the U.S. and want to view a U.K. service, you'd select U.K. from the list.

3. Sit back and enjoy the show. Head to BBC iPlayer and stream new episodes of The Tourist season 2 online.

How to watch The Tourist season 2 in the U.S.

Although HBO Max co-produced season 1 and was the U.S. streaming home of The Tourist, the company hasn’t been similarly involved with the second season and has even removed the show’s initial episodes from its platform. 

However, The Tourist has a new home alongside other crime thrillers on Netflix . It arrived a little later than the U.K, but season 2 is available (alongside season 1), right now.  

A U.K. citizen travelling abroad? With a VPN you can connect to BBC iPlayer from anywhere, and stream hit shows like The Tourist season 2 online no matter where you are.

Can you watch The Tourist season 2 online in Canada?

There’s no release date in Canada for The Tourist season 2 just yet. Rights to stream the series were initially purchased by Amazon Prime in 2022 – the early episodes are available to stream now – but the platform hasn’t confirmed whether it will also host the second season.

Abroad and unable to access BBC iPlayer? As mentioned above, a VPN will let you stream The Tourist season 2 online no matter where you are.

How to watch The Tourist season 2 online FREE in Australia

Stan, the company co-producing The Tourist with the BBC, is the place to find all new season 2 episodes in Australia with the whole season available right now . 

Stan offers an incredible free 30-day trial to check out the streaming service. After that, the Basic plan costs $10 AUD/per month, with pricier options if you want to stream on more than one device and in HD or 4K quality.

But remember: if you're based in the U.K. but aren't there at the moment, you could still connect to BBC iPlayer and stream The Tourist season 2 live or on-demand. All you need is a VPN such as  ExpressVPN .

The Tourist season 2 TV aired in the U.K. on the following dates:

• The Tourist season 2 episode 1 – Monday, Jan. 1
• The Tourist season 2 episode 2 – Tuesday, Jan. 2
• The Tourist season 2 episode 3 – Sunday, Jan. 7
• The Tourist season 2 episode 4 – Sunday, Jan. 14
• The Tourist season 2 episode 5 – Sunday, Jan. 21
• The Tourist season 2 episode 6 – Sunday, Jan. 28
• Jamie Dornan as Elliott Stanley
• Danielle Macdonald as Helen Chambers
• Greg Larsen as Ethan Krum
• Conor MacNeill as Detective Ruairi Slater
• Olwen Fouéré as Niamh Cassidy
• Diarmaid Murtagh as Donal
• Nessa Matthews as Orla
• Mark McKenna as Fergel
• Francis Magee as Frank

Watch The Tourist season 2 trailer

Before you check out how to watch The Tourist season 2 online, take a look at the explosive trailer, below:

What to expect from The Tourist season 2?

Harry and Jack Williams, Writers and Managing Directors of Two Brothers Pictures say: "We’re so excited to take Elliot and Helen to Ireland, where they will meet a host of dark and off beat new characters. With a stellar cast to match, we can’t wait for it all to be brought to life."

Lindsay Salt, BBC Director of Drama, says: “I could not be happier to welcome the phenomenon that is The Tourist back to BBC One and iPlayer. With an ingenious new adventure from the dazzling minds of Harry and Jack Williams, things are about to get even wilder for Elliot and Helen.”

The Tourist series two is a Two Brothers Pictures (an All3Media company) production for the BBC, in association with Stan, ZDF and All3Media International created and written by Harry and Jack Williams (The Missing, Baptiste, Fleabag). Fergus O’Brien (Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack) directs the opening block with Johann Perry (Happy Valley, Gentleman Jack) as DOP, while Lisa Mulcahy (Blood, Years and Years) and Kate Dolan (Kin, You Are Not My Mother) direct block two and three respectively.

Alex Mercer (Inside Man, Crossfire) is producer, with Louise Kiely (The Banshees of Inisherin, Normal People) as casting director. Executive producers are Harry and Jack Williams, Daniel Walker and Sarah Hammond for Two Brothers Pictures, with Nawfal Faizullah for the BBC, and Jamie Dornan.

Who is joining the cast of The Tourist season 2?

Joining the BAFTA and Golden Globe award nominated Jamie Dornan (Belfast, The Fall) and Danielle Macdonald (Unbelievable, Dumplin’) are Conor MacNeill (Industry, The Fall), Olwen Fouéré (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Northman), Francis Magee (Kin, Then You Run), Mark McKenna (Sing Street, One of Us is Lying), Diarmaid Murtagh (Vikings, Outlander), and Nessa Matthews (Fair City).

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Daniel Pateman has been a freelance writer since 2018. He currently works across a range of brands including TechRadar, T3, GamesRadar, What Hi-Fi? and  CinemaBlend , where he regularly pens How To Watch articles about where our readers can stream the latest new movies and TV shows, as well as producing detailed guides on the best streaming services, from Disney Plus to Netflix. He received a first-class degree in Humanities and Media in 2013 from Birkbeck University and later an MA in Contemporary Literature and Culture. In addition to his work for Future's websites, Daniel writes across the broad spectrum of arts topics – including photography, sculpture, painting, film – and has been published in The Brooklyn Rail and Eyeline magazine, among others.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Tourist’ On Netflix, Where Jamie Dornan Plays A Man Without His Memory Trying To Outrun His Past

Where to stream:.

• The Tourist

What would you do if you lost your memory? Not just what you had for breakfast, but all sense of who you are and who is in your life? Then you find out that someone really, really wants to see you dead? That’s the idea behind the new Netflix series, which originally ran on HBO Max back in 2022.

THE TOURIST : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of the arid environment in the Australian Outback. A tiny car drives down an empty road.

The Gist: A man (Jamie Dornan) stops for gas; he’s wearing a generic “AUSTRALIA” tourist t-shirt. He has no idea why the attendant at the station makes him sign out for the bathroom key. We see him come out the back door of the bathroom, next to the Dumpsters.

As he’s driving on the seemingly empty road in his tiny Mazda, a massive tractor trailer bears down on him. When the tractor trailer rams the man’s car, he realizes it’s not just an aggressive driver. After a long chase over some rough terrain, the man thinks he’s gotten away from the truck, when the truck slams into him, causing the tiny car to roll over a few times.

The man wakes up in the local hospital, surprisingly not severely injured. However, he has no idea who he is or what he was doing. He doesn’t even remember his own name. He can recall a song title when he’s in an MRI machine, but that’s about it.

A friendly local cop, Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), goes to his room to take a statement. She is a bit uncomfortable with the man’s lack of memory, but ends up being reassuring to an extent. The only thing he finds in his possessions is a note to meet someone the next day at a diner in a nearby town. Helen says she’ll look into that.

We follow Helen home and see that, like most of us, she has issues with her weight, not the least of which is exacerbated by her fiancé Ethan (Greg Larsen) and their upcoming wedding.

Another thing we see is someone buried underground. Desperate to get out of whatever box he’s been put in, he tries to call someone on his phone, but no one is answering.

The man goes outside to get air, but gets lost inside the hospital, scaring him senseless. He decides to check himself out of the hospital the next day, against medical advice, because he needs to go to that diner and find out just who wanted to meet him there. Helen understands why he wants to do it, and gives him a bus ticket to get there.

At the diner, he meets a waitress named Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin), who seems to be fascinated by his amnesia. When she spills lemonade on him, she takes him out to where there are bathrooms. Just then, there’s an explosion, right in the booth where he was sitting. He wonders aloud why in the world someone is trying to kill him.

Pictures from a disposable camera found at the crash site help him retrace his steps, as well as video from the gift shop he visited. It brings him back to the gas station and its bathroom. He doesn’t find out his name though, as he signed the key sign-out sheet as “Crocodile Dundee.” But he finds something else; a stuffed koala that he hid next to the Dumpster. Much to his surprise, it starts ringing.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take the movie  Memento and cross it with the quirkiness of the first season of the  Fargo series, and you’ve got the vibe of  The Tourist.

Our Take: The Tourist , written by Harry Williams and Jack Williams ( The Missing, Fleabag ) looks like it’s a complex show with a twisty plot, but when you really take a close look, it’s pretty straightforward. Dornan’s character has no idea who he is; all he knows is that someone wants to kill him. With the help of Helen and others, he’ll try to piece things together before those that are after him, including Billy (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), the whistling man who almost squashed him in the tractor trailer, catch up to him.

In the first episode,  The Tourist  evolves from what seems like a thriller to a more personal narrative. It’s why we get involved in Helen’s life when she’s off-duty. In a Weight Watchers-style meeting, she claims she doesn’t like her body, even though everyone is yelling about body acceptance. But it also feels like she’s more there because of her fiancé than anything else. So even though Helen knows her name, who’s in her life and what she does, she also hasn’t found herself. Plus, she seems to be made to feel guilty about just about everything.

Perhaps as she gets more involved in the life of Dornan’s character, the more she will figure out who she is. At least that’s what we hope, because Macdonald is utterly charming as Helen, who is very much in the vein of Allison Tolman’s portrayal of Molly Solverson in the aforementioned  Fargo. She’s good at her job, even if she’s a bit green, but also is a friendly and helpful sort who needs to help herself most of all.

There is definitely a bit of a sense of humor running the first episode, but the Williamses aren’t trying to make the show quippy. The humor is there when people seem to be fascinated with Dornan’s character’s amnesia, though he assures them it’s no picnic. The humor creeps in along the edges of the show, but it does just enough to ease what is a pretty serious and grim performance by Dornan.

There is one twist near the end of the episode that we won’t spoil here, but it does make us wonder if, as things get more complicated for Dornan’s character (notice we haven’t named him yet, because the character has none as yet), the plot will become more convoluted. We hope not, as it seems the straightforward manner in which this story is being told suits  The Tourist just fine.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: When the stuffed koala starts ringing, the man digs out a burner phone and answers it. When the man who’s buried starts yelling in relief that he answered, the man says, “Uh, who’s this?”

Sleeper Star: Shalom Brune-Franklin does some compelling work as Luci, and we know that she’s much more involved in this story than most of the first episode lets on.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could find.

Our Call:  STREAM IT.  The Tourist  hooked us in with its story, plus the performances by Dornan, Macdonald and Brune-Franklin. Let’s hope the story continues to be interesting as the season goes on.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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The Tourist season 2: US release date, cast, plot and more

The Tourist season 2 sees Jamie Dornan return as Elliot as the story comes to Ireland.

Jamie Dornan fans will be delighted that The Tourist season 2 is finally here, with the whole series now available to watch on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Netflix in the US. 

The Tourist season 2 episode 1 The Tourist season 2 episode 2 The Tourist season 2 episode 3 The Tourist season 2 episode 4 The Tourist season 2 episode 5 The Tourist season 2 ending explained The Tourist season 3 ▶ Watch The Tourist season 2 online

With the action switching from Australia's Outback to Ireland, the landscape looks very different from when we last saw Elliot. But whether he's running away from some mysterious pursuers or covered in blood, his situation doesn't seem to have improved too much!  

Teasing the new series, Jamie says: "For the second series we pick up with Elliot in Ireland where he tries to discover his real family and get some answers on who he is. Whilst Elliot is in Ireland, he also gets caught up in all kinds of craziness with people trying to kill him."

He adds: "Family is a big theme in this series. We're dealing with a guy who has no concept of who he is, and you can only imagine how terrifying that is, but little by little there are these kernels of information revealed to him and he starts to piece his history together and his family history. It's not that pretty, but it's vital and it's a big part of our story."

Screenwriters Jack and Harry Williams — whose previous screenwriting hits include The Missing and One of Us — have penned the scripts of the follow-up series.

The Tourist season 1 was a big hit when it launched on BBC One and the iPlayer last January, with 12 million people watching it in the first 30 days it was available online. It then went on to have similar success on HBO for US fans. Here's everything we know about season 2...

The Tourist season 2 release date

The Tourist season 2 premiered on BBC One on Monday 1 January 2024 at 9 pm. The second episode follows on Tuesday 2 January on BBC One at 9 pm. Subsequent episodes air on consecutive Sundays throughout January. The whole series is available now as a box set on BBC iPlayer. 

The Tourist season 1 was broadcast on HBO Max in the United States, but it has moved to Netflix for the second season, with all the episodes available to stream from 29 February 2024. 

The Tourist season 2 plot

The first series started with "The Man" — whose name was revealed to be Elliot — waking up in Australia with total amnesia before he and Constable Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald) became embroiled in a cat-and-mouse game with mysterious figures chasing them across Australia. 

The new series sees Helen accompanying Elliot back to Ireland as he tries to rediscover his roots, where they soon find themselves dragged into the dangerous whirlwind of his past life. An official synopsis reads...

"After their adventure in the Australian Outback, The Tourist’s epic second series follows Dornan and Macdonald’s characters Elliot and Helen as they travel to Ireland together. 

"In an attempt to rediscover Elliot’s roots following his memory loss, they’re dragged into the dangerous whirlwind of his past life and are confronted by friends and foes both old and new, including Niamh Cassidy (Olwen Fouéré) and the McDonnell family – Donal (Diarmaid Murtagh), Orla (Nessa Matthews), Fergal (Mark McKenna), and Frank (Francis Magee). 

"Detective Ruairi Slater (Conor MacNeill) becomes embroiled in the crossfire between the McDonnells and the Cassidys as the secrets of the family rivalry unravel."

The Tourist season 2 cast

Jamie Dornan ( Fifty Shades of Grey, Belfast ) is back as Elliot, while Australian actress Danielle Macdonald ( Bird Box ) again plays former Constable Helen Chambers.

Joining them for the second series are Conor MacNeill  (Industry, The Fall) , Olwen Fouéré  (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Northman),  Francis Magee  (Justice League, Then You Run) , Mark McKenna  (Sing Street, One of Us is Lying) , Diarmaid Murtagh  (Vikings, Outlander),  and Nessa Matthews  (Neon, HEN) . 

Series two also sees Greg Larsen reprise his role as Ethan Krum.

The Tourist season 2 trailer

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Sean is a Senior Feature writer for TV Times, What's On TV and TV & Satellite Week, who also writes for whattowatch.com. He's been covering the world of TV for over 15 years and in that time he's been lucky enough to interview stars like Ian McKellen, Tom Hardy and Kate Winslet. His favourite shows are  I'm Alan Partridge, The Wire, People Just Do Nothing  and  Succession  and in his spare time he enjoys drinking tea, doing crosswords and watching football. 

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China recovers its position as top spender in 2023 as Asia and the Pacific reopens to tourism

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China has recovered its position as top spender on international tourism in 2023 as Asia and the Pacific consolidates its recovery from the impacts of the pandemic. In 2022, the list of top spenders was headed by the United States. France, Spain and USA took the top spots for most-visited destinations.

Top Tourism Spenders in 2023 

Chinese expenditure on travel abroad reached USD 196.5 billion in 2023, ahead of the United States (USD 150 billion), Germany (USD 112 billion), the United Kingdom (USD 110 billion) and France (USD 49 billion). Making up the top ten spenders for 2023 are Canada, Italy, India, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Korea. India jumped to 8th place, from 14th in 2019, confirming the growing importance of the country as a source market, while Italy rose from 10th to 7th position. 

Top in arrivals and receipts: France, Spain and USA consolidate their positions 

France consolidated its position as the world’s most visited destination in 2023 with 100 million international tourist arrivals. Spain was second with 85 million, followed by the United States (66 million), Italy (57 million) and Türkiye, which closed the top five with 55 million international tourists.  

Completing the top ten most visited destinations in 2023 are Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece and Austria. Compared to before the pandemic, Italy, Türkiye, Mexico, Germany and Austria all rose one position, while the United Kingdom rose from 10th to 7th and Greece from 13th to 9th. 

On the side on international tourism receipts, the ranking is led by the United States, earning USD 176 billion in 2023, followed by Spain (USD 92 billion), the United Kingdom (USD 74 billion), France (USD 69 billion) and Italy (USD 56 billion). 

Following the above, destinations earning the most from international tourism in 2023 include the United Arab Emirates, Türkiye, Australia, Canada, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Macao (China), India and Mexico which complete the top 15 list of tourism earners.  

Upward movements in the ranking among the top earners include the UK jumping to the 3rd position from 5th pre-pandemic, the United Arab Emirates from 13th to 6th, Türkiye from 12th to 7th, Canada from 15th to 9th, Saudi Arabia from 27th to 12th, and Mexico from 17th to 15th.  

Croatia (from 32nd to 25th), Morocco (from 41st to 31st) and the Dominican Republic (43rd to 34th) also moved up in the Top 50 ranking by receipts in 2023, as did Qatar (from 51st to 37th) and Colombia (50th to 44th). 

Looking ahead to a full recovery globally in 2024 

As per the latest World Tourism Barometer , in 2023 international tourist arrivals recovered 89% of 2019 levels and 97% in Q1 2024. UN Tourism’s projection for 2024 points to a full recovery of international tourism with arrivals growing 2% above 2019 levels, backed by strong demand, enhanced air connectivity and the continued recovery of China and other major Asian markets. 

Total export revenues from international tourism, including both receipts and passenger transport, reached an estimated USD 1.7 trillion in 2023, about 96% of pre-pandemic levels in real terms. Tourism direct GDP recovered pre-pandemic levels in 2023, reaching an estimated USD 3.3 trillion, equivalent to 3% of global GDP. 

Related links:

• Download News Release on PDF
• Tourism Barometer Data
• World Tourism Barometer PPT

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