Frantic action of the opening double bill is much more impressive than impish trailer suggested
The misleading trailers and the presence of Alfie Allen looking his most impish suggested this five-parter (Sky Atlantic, Thursday, August 28, 9pm and 10pm) was going to be one of those frantic, larky, knockabout sub-Tarantino romps where characters are dispatched with a bullet through the head, followed by a smartarse quip.
It’s frantic, alright. The pace of the opening double bill of episodes (the rest follow weekly) never lets up. There are a few bullets through heads too, as well as the occasional funny line.
But the overall tone is serious. The plentiful action scenes are done with one foot planted in reality, while violent death, of which there’s also a lot, is not treated as a joke, least of all in a scene where the victim is a young child.
According to the credits, the series is “inspired” by The Atomic Bazaar, a non-fiction book by American journalist William Langewiesche, who died in June, about the lucrative smuggling of nuclear weapons to some of the world’s most dangerously volatile nations.
Atomic’s writer Gregory Burke (Rebus, ’71), merely uses the book as a peg on which to hang a slick, fast-moving, highly entertaining action adventure with a sometimes surprising amount of heart in among the mayhem.
Allen plays carefree smuggler Max, who’s driving through the Algerian desert to deliver a package of drugs to Beirut via Libya. On the return visit, he’s supposed to be transporting a pair of small and presumably very valuable statues.
Much to the irritation of his uncommunicative passenger, who claims to speak no English, Max – who says the only thing he believes in is love – bangs on interminably about his lovely girlfriend Laetitia (Charlie Murphy), whose picture he keeps pasted to the dashboard.
Alfie Allen and Shazad Latif have great on-screen chemistry in ‘Atomic’. Photo: Sky
The passenger becomes even less communicative when they’re ambushed by a gang of jihadis who shoot him dead. Rather than killing Max too, the jihadis’ leader – an Englishman played by Shazad Latif (Captain Nemo in Disney+’s half-hearted Nautilus) – instead turns his gun on his comrades, wiping out all of them.
When Max’s unwanted new travelling companion, who demands he drive him to Benghazi, refuses to tell him his name, he christens him JJ, after the infamous Islamic State terrorist Jihadi John.
Just when Max thinks his day can’t possibly get any worse, it gets worse. JJ is being pursued by a group of mercenaries led by a raging, wide-eyed nutter called Rab (Stuart Martin, currently to be seen as a different raging, wide-eyed nutter in Netflix’s Hostage).
For the first hour, ‘Atomic’ is a dizzying whirl of fights, flights, scrapes and shootouts
Max and JJ escape by the skin of their teeth, picking up an orphaned young boy who’s the only survivor of an ambush along the way, but run into more trouble, which sees Max’s cargo go up in flames.
After coming out on top in a violent confrontation with the drug cartel’s reps, who understandably want to know where their goodies have gone, the pair manage to grab the statues and make a run for it. Before they leg it, however, a dying man ominously warns them to keep them two metres apart at all times.
For the first hour, Atomic is a dizzying whirl of fights, flights, scrapes and shootouts as Max and JJ zip around locations in north Africa and the Middle East with corrupt cops, thuggish mercenaries, angry drug barons, Russian gangsters, intelligence agents and even a father bent on revenge on their tail.
Samira Wiley plays an undercover CIA agent in ‘Atomic’. Photo: Sky
It’s initially a little hard to keep up with who’s who. Things settle down, however, when Samira Wiley (The Handmaid’s Tale) enters the picture as Cassie Elliott, an undercover CIA agent whose cover job is university physics lecturer.
Cassie, who happens to be a nuclear expert, helpfully explains that what Max and JJ are carrying in a pair of holdall bags are not just statues, but two clumps of enriched uranium.
If they’re brought too close together, there could be a reaction, or even “a Hiroshima-sized explosion”.
Directed with real flair and kinetic energy by Sharriff Korver, Atomic rips along at a fine clip.
There’s great odd-couple chemistry between Allen and Latif, who bring a surprising amount of warmth and humanity to what could easily be unlikeable characters.
An already fine cast is bolstered by Brian Gleeson as a starchy CIA man.
Rating: Three stars