Things don’t look good for Col. Philip Locke in the latest episode of “Strike Back.”
The season’s sixth episode, which I’m calling “Locked & Loaded,” is so action-packed it almost feels like a season finale. Just check out the exclusive RedEye video clip above in which Stonebridge (Philip Winchester), Scott (Sullivan Stapleton) and Martinez (Milauna Jemai Jackson) confront Mairead McKenna (Catherine Walker) and her Irish terrorists in the streets a Budapest. What happens after the scene will blow your mind.
When we left off last week, McKenna had not only escaped her Section 20 captors, but had kidnapped Locke (Robson Green) in order to exact revenge on him for the things he did to her brother years before. As you can see in the clip below, she’s planning a deadly send-off—and making him do all the work for it.
The episode, airing at 9 p.m. CT Friday, Sept. 20 with replays throughout the weekend (10:30 p.m. Friday; 8:10 p.m. and 10:50 p.m. Sept. 21; 7 p.m. Sept. 25; 8 p.m. Sept. 26), was written John Simpson and directed by Paul Wilmshurst.
Episodes 5 and 6 of the season have been a good showcase for Green, who has starred in such great British dramas as “Wire in the Blood” and “Touching Evil” to name just a few. Director and series showrunner Michael J. Bassett said he wanted a new kind of leader for Section 20 this season, and thought having a man would bring a different energy to play off that of Rhona Mitra’s Major Rachel Dalton.
“I thought it was going to be really interesting to keep developing that conflict,” he told me during San Diego Comic-Con International. “And he’s a senior soldier who’s sort of done everything that the boys have done. He doesn’t have to fight them for respect; by default he gets it.”
After looking at several actors for the role, Bassett said, they came to Green, who it turned out already was a fan of the show.
“He brought something completely new. The energy and the enthusiasm changed perceptibly when he walked on the set,” said Bassett, who is notorious for putting the actors through their paces physically. “He’s a little older than these fellows and he can’t keep up, but he will try. And when I’m having him in helicopters firing grenade launchers he’s having the time of his life, which is fantastic.”
Winchester is also a fan of Green’s. He told me at Comic-Con that Green also brought an interesting dynamic between Scott and Stonebridge and their commanding officer—who has always been a woman. “He turned the leadership on its head and it changed how the Crib operates, which was really cool,” he said.
You can listen to Winchester’s comments in the video below, as well as watch a Recon video from Cinemax showing Green’s early days on set in South Africa with Winchester and Stapleton.
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