HBO’s Strike Back brings counterterrorism unit Section 20 to Southeast Asia

Confusion today surrounds the latest terrorist-terminating mission of Section 20, the peerless British military intelligence unit from HBO’s Strike Back, now operating undercover in Southeast Asia.

Having sprung from the imagination of novelist and ex-SAS sergeant Chris Ryan, Section 20 travels the world obliterating enemies of the good guys (the West), while fooling the felonious (and some viewers) by featuring a partly shifting cast for each season of its star vehicle. Which is also where the confusion comes in: HBO believes it is now screening series six of the show, while industry watchers everywhere are calling it series seven.

No matter: Strike Back series 6.5, subtitled Revolution, begins with a covert operation requiring our heroic young guns to retrieve the nuclear payload from a Russian bomber that has crashed into the South China Sea. They are contractually obliged to empty every automatic-rifle clip and detonate every last grenade in reclaiming the warhead from criminal organisation Spectre, which stole it from the watery depths before 007 (Sean Connery) could … hang on a minute. Isn’t this just Thunderball, transposed from the Bahamas?

Well, now you mention it. But with a Kuala Lumpur-based Triad supplying the chief villains, the Malaysian police (led by Vietnamese-Australian Neighbours refugee Ann Truong) on the case and a corrupt Indian businesswoman joining the fun, the embroidery is new – not least when Section 20 operatives realise they must work with a treacherous Russian agent to avert catastrophe.

Strike Back is a superior sort of equal-opportunity all-action thrill ride that has proved sufficiently meaty to attract the likes of Michelle Yeoh, who made her television debut in series four.

Supplying the flinty-eyed female feistiness this time is Indonesian-Iranian-Australian Alin Sumarwata (coincidentally another Neighbours alumna), who’s tough enough to duke it out with Hong Kong’s own kung fu-fighting fiend Tom Wu (as a vicious Triad enforcer). And who would ever have thought that forehead-studded psychopathic punk Vyvyan Basterd of The Young Ones (Adrian Edmondson) would grow up to become a British high commissioner?