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With a soundtrack which featured classic songs by AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Motörhead, The Clash, Killing Joke and more, the first series of BBC World War II drama SAS Rogue Heroes – written by Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight – was quite possibly the loudest TV series ever aired on British television.
Season two picks up where season one ended, following the heroic, if borderline insane, adventures of maverick SAS co-founder Paddy Mayne, played by Jack O’Connell in a manner which recalls The Almighty’s Ricky Warwick circa Just Add Life, Warwick hailing, like Mayne, from Newtownards, County Down. Gwilym Lee, who received rave reviews for his portrayal of Queen guitarist Brian May in the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic, stars as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Stirling, the man tasked with giving orders to Mayne, who has a deep-rooted aversion to toeing the line.
Fans of the first series of the show can rest assured that the new season, in which the battleground switches from Cairo to Italy, is every bit as explosive, with an equally loud and lairy soundtrack.
Here are the 10 best songs you’ll hear.
Warning: contains plot spoilers.
Adolescents – Rip It Up (1981)
The opening minutes of episode 1, season 2, finds Paddy Mayne “somewhat aggrieved” after being denied compassionate leave to attend his father’s funeral. Soon enough, he’s channelling this understandable frustration into reducing tables and chairs in the tea room of Cairo’s fancy Palm Court Hotel to matchwood.
“Apologies ladies and gentlemen,” he explains to shocked fellow guests, “but GHQ Cairo has got my fucking goat.”
When a military policeman makes the ill-advised decision to tell Mayne to calm down, the Irishman opts not to obey this directive. As the opening riff of Rip It Up kicks in and – irony alert! – Adolescents frontman Tony Cadena starts decrying senseless violence in the SoCal punk scene (“We’re not the background for your stupid fights“), heads are cracked, bones are broken and blood is spilled.
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The Saints – No Time (1977)
The opening scene of episode 2 finds Mayne, disguised as a fisherman, on a boat bobbing gently in Augusta Harbour, Sicily, regaling his colleague Reggie Seekings with an old Irish folk tale concerning The Salmon of Knowledge as suspicious German soldiers on the harbour wall make increasingly agitated threats to open fire on their vessel. With the anxious Seekings itching to shoulder one of the rocker launchers concealed on the craft, viewers are gifted a blast of Australia’s finest punk rock band The Saints, with No Time, the b-side of their superb debut single (I’m) Stranded. It may not surprise you to learn that this stand-off is not resolved amicably.
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Sham 69 – If The Kids Are United (1978)
Bored, restless and frustrated in the Mafia-controlled, abandoned Sicilian town Augusta, following orders to delay his unit’s advance, Mayne insists that his men scale a nearby mountain to keep active. Knowing better than to challenge the volatile Ulsterman, his troop comply, and Sham 69’s evergreen paean to brotherhood, solidarity and community soundtracks their descent to a beautiful, seemingly deserted beach. A restorative bout of skinny-dipping duly elevates morale, but not before the local Cosa Nostra chapter make their introductions.
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The Fall – Theme from Sparta F.C. (2004)
One of two songs by the singular Mancunian post-punks to grace episode 3, Theme from Sparta F.C. has appeared on British TV many times, having being chosen as theme music to Final Score, the BBC’s round-up of football score, from 2005 to 2009. In its new setting, the song is used to accompany scenes of the scenes of the SAS soldiers playing football and sparring while awaiting new orders in Augusta.
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Stiff Little Fingers – Gotta Gettaway
A rather literal deployment of Belfast punk heroes Stiff Little Fingers’ ode to breaking free of suffocating surroundings in search of new experiences (“I feel life passing me by“), used to accentuate SAS founder David Stirling’s yearning to escape the Prisoner of War camp in which he’s being held in Italy.
Originally released as a single on Rough Trade in 1979, the song resurfaced on the quartet’s second album, Nobody’s Heroes. And with all due respect to Jack O’Connell’s commendable North of Ireland accent, it’s nice to hear the real thing here, not least because, unlike the Derby-born actor, Jake Burns doesn’t. feel. the. need. to. leave. enough. space. to. say. a. Hail. Mary. between. every. fucking. syllable.
The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary (1985)
The lead single from The Cult’s excellent second album, 1985’s Love, plays out at the end of episode 4, after Paddy Mayne offers his traumatised pal Reggie Seekings either sodium amytal (a barbiturate used in WW II to treat soldiers with shell shock) or the collected poems of William Blake to help him cope with a devastating and deadly German assault on the SAS troops. “I recommend the latter,” the erudite Mayne advises.
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MC5 – Kick Out The Jams
The first song heard in the season’s penultimate episode, Kick Out The Jams is one of the all-time rock classics, a rallying call from legendary, and hugely influential, Detroit punks MC5. The song is used as the background to a stramash in the SAS ‘mess’ room, as jealousy spills over into violence while Field Marshall Montgomery is en route to see the British Army’s most-feared fighters.
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Deep Purple – Highway Star
Also employed in Episode 5, the fabulous opening track on Deep Purple’s sixth album, 1972’s Machine Head, makes for a suitably exhilarating accompaniment to images of the SAS blowing up Italian railway tracks, bridges and trains.
The Damned – Neat Neat Neat
Used in the season’s concluding episode, The Damned’s thrillingly urgent second single soundtracks yet another fistfight, as the SAS gatecrash a high-powered meeting at the Ritz hotel in London, and proceed to knock seven shades of shit out of a group of mouthy, arrogant US Marines. It could be The 100 Club in 1977, if you squint hard enough.
AC/DC – Walk All Over You (1979)
The first series of SAS Rogue Heroes opened and closed with the same song: AC/DC’s If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It), and Season 2 climaxes with another classic Young/Young/Scott anthem from Highway To Hell, the menacingWalk All Over You. The song is used, following an unlikely airborne singalong of the Irish folk classic Whisky in The Jar, as the SAS prepare to parachute into France for D-Day in June 1944.
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Series two of SAS Rogue Heroes is showing now on BBC1 in the UK, and on the BBC iPlayer.
