Strike Back had better not kill off Jamie Bamber
Strike Back Season 6 has Alexander Coltrane on the chopping block, but Jamie Bamber can’t possibly be the show’s next casualty.
The final minutes of last week’s Strike Back likely had fans of the Cinemax series thinking, “Here we go again.”
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details about the most recently aired episode of Strike Back.
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Colonel Alexander Coltrane (Jamie Bamber) saved the lives of his team members, but Section 20’s commanding officer found himself in the clutches of Pavel Kuragin (Alec Newman). So is Coltrane about to meet the same fate that’s befallen all of his predecessors?
Not if the show is smart about this.
Being the boss on Strike Back is equivalent to portraying a redshirt on Star Trek. Every single one of them—Eleanor Grant (Amanda Mealing), Rachel Dalton (Rhona Mitra), Philip Locke (Robson Green), and Adeena Donovan (Nina Sosanya)—has ended up dead.
Watching Coltrane be captured by rogue Russian agent Pavel, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s likewise headed down the short path. But that would be a criminal waste of a character who’s added a tremendous amount to Strike Back and an even better actor.
Another thing about Section 20’s supervisors is that they’ve been hit and miss. Some characters have been more engaging than others. Amanda Mealing set the bar pretty high as the no-nonsense but not entirely truthful Grant, and Robson Green doing anything is always entertaining, so it was a blast watching Locke run things over with a bulldozer.
Coltrane has been the best of the lot. That’s because he’s not written as a supervisor; he feels like another member of the team. Not only is he going out and saving lives (as they’ve all had to do on occasion), but he’s got the kind of rich backstory that most boss characters on TV don’t have. With his own tormented past and the size of the chip on his shoulder, Cinemax could do a whole prequel about the history of Alexander Coltrane.
He’s got so many wheels turning in his head. This is the man who fell from grace so hard that he left a crater. But that failure fuels him, while also providing a certain degree of self-loathing. He’s learned how to play the diplomatic part, but he also his eyes open to how much of that is smoke and mirrors. Coltrane’s a walking contradiction, really, and the only thing he knows is that he’s not going to fail again. It’d be a terrible end to his story if he clawed back just to catch a bullet.
Putting the character aside, Strike Back would lose something without Jamie Bamber. The show just fits him; it gives him material to really sink his teeth into, leaves space for his deadpan wit, and allows him to flex the action hero muscles he hasn’t used on American TV since the end of Battlestar Galactica. He’s firing on all cylinders, and when you can get an actor the caliber of Jamie Bamber on your show, you keep him around.
He’s a tremendous talent, particularly in the way he handles characters who have multiple layers or idiosyncracies about them. He’s able to balance different aspects and make sure that they all come through, even if it’s just in small nuances. What he’s been able to do with Coltrane is great, in that he’s made him such a strong personality and a character whose story we want to follow in his own right, not just the person handing out the marching orders.
Bamber works perfectly with the rest of the show’s regular cast, while also being tough enough that he stands half a chance at ordering them around. He’s the boss they need, and Strike Back is the show he deserves. Hopefully, his time in Section 20 won’t end with just one season.
Strike Back airs Fridays at 10 p.m. on Cinemax. For more on Strike Back and other Cinemax shows, follow the Cinemax category at Hidden Remote.