The Tourist is a Mystery Thriller TV drama written by Harry and Jack Williams and produced in part by The BBC as well as several other international companies. The first series, consisting of six episodes, was broadcast in 2022.
Jamie Dornan plays a man, initially known only as "The Man", who is involved in a car crash in the Australian Outback, and subsequently wakes up in hospital with complete amnesia. Using what limited clues he has, and with the help of a friendly local police officer called Helen (Danielle Macdonald), he tries to find out who he is. As the plot develops and various unsavoury characters start to take in interest in The Man, it becomes increasingly clear that his past is much, much murkier than first assumed.
For a time, it was the most-watched show on the BBC's iPlayer streaming platform, with the first episode ending up as the third most-watched individual programme on iPlayer in 2022.
This led to an originally-unplanned second series, in which The Man and Helen travel to Ireland to find out more about the former's past. It was broadcast in 2024.
The Tourist tropes:
- All Just a Dream: The first part of the fifth episode of the second series, in which Helen and Elliot return to Australia, only for Helen's insistence on finding out the story behind the missing plane to put a strain on their relationship, is revealed to have been the dream Helen is having while in a coma as a result of being shot in the stomach by Lena.
- Ambiguous Situation: A few examples.
- Does Helen really think that St. Petersburg in Florida is the St. Petersburg where the Winter Palace is? See below under Global Ignorance for more.
- When Elliot and Helen wake up in bed together after getting drunk the previous night, it's unclear whether or not they had sex; Helen swears they went no further than kissing, although as she had consumed several dirty martinis after trying said cocktail for the first time, she may not remember everything.
- Did DS Slater murder his wife, or is he telling the truth about her dying of natural causes and him being too grief-stricken to report her death, leading him to conceal her body in the basement?
- Amnesiac Dissonance: As Elliot learns more about his past, he becomes increasingly horrified and disgusted by the dubious and violent life he's led, which included being involved in organized crime. It comes to a head in the finale when he learns that not only was he an accountant for a drug-dealer, he was actively involved in coercing women into smuggling heroin across borders in their stomachs, and was thus responsible for the deaths of at least two of those women.
- Amnesia Loop: Played for laughs in the first episode. The first time the Man visits a gas station and is told by the attendant that he must sign the register to get the key to the outside toilet, he reacts with an incredulous "Why would you need to sign for it? It's not like you're trying to buy it". He says the same thing when he revisits the gas station after getting amnesia.
- Armour-Piercing Question: When Elliot has Frank McDonnell at gunpoint, he seems serious about killing him. Frank then asks why he would want to do this, given that he has no memory of the feud between their families and had stated that he does not care about said feud — meaning that if he did kill Frank, he would be doing so for no reason whatsoever. Elliot backs down as a result.
- Bait-and-Switch: Lena, who turns out to have been the one who lured Elliot back to Ireland, asks Donal if she can be the one to shoot Elliot after he and Helen are captured (again, in Elliot's case) by the McDonnells. Donal agrees, but instead of shooting Elliot as everyone expects, she shoots Helen, so Elliot can know the pain of watching a loved one die in front of him.
- Basement-Dweller: In the second series, Ruairi Slater provides a somewhat creepy example of this trope, given that the basement in question contains the decomposing body of his late wife and a mannequin dressed in her clothes.
- Big Bad: In the first series, combined with The Don in the case of Kosta — an international drug dealer who has one of Australia's best cops (Rogers) on his payroll. He's after The Man because he used to be a key man in Kosta's organisation before he ran off with $1,000,000 and Luci, who had previously been Kosta's girlfriend.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Helen. She's (adorkably) smart, too.
- Black Comedy: Plenty.
- In the aftermath of the diner blowing up, The Man necks a beer and follows it by remarking that he hopes he's not an alcoholic.
- When he gets kidnapped at the start of the second series, Elliot asks his kidnappers if this has anything to do with Kosta. They, having not heard of the Big Bad of the first series, are momentarily confused as to why them kidnapping someone would have anything to do with a coffee shop (Costa Coffee being a leading British chain of coffee shops, with over a hundred outlets in Ireland).
- Elliot's attempt to get away from his kidnappers in the first episode of the second series is accompanied by "Don't Get Me Wrong" by The Pretenders, which is playing on the radio of the kidnappers' van.
- Brick Joke: Everyone who goes to the gas station reacts with incredulity on learning that the proprietor makes visitors sign a register before allowing them to use the outside toilet.
- British Brevity: Two series, six episodes in each.
- Broken Ace: Detective Inspector Lachlan Rogers, although most Aussie cops just see him as The Ace as he does not appear to have told anyone about his terminal cancer diagnosis. Turns out, he's also a Dirty Cop who works for Kosta.
- Buried Alive: The fate of The Man's mystery caller at the end of the first episode. He and Luci rush to find him, but a sandstorm impedes their progress, and by the time they find him, he's dead.
- The Bus Came Back: As well as The Man and Helen, Ethan and Lena return for the second series. Billy also appears, but only in the coma dream Helen has after getting shot by Lena.
- Career Versus Man: Helen, who has recently become a police officer, is engaged to Ethan, who tries to convince her to give up on her new career. Given that he's a Gaslighting Jerkass, it comes as something of a relief when she finally dumps him. By the start of the second series, though, she is revealed to have quit the police in order to go travelling with Elliot, who's now her boyfriend.
- Chekhov's Gun: Plenty of examples.
- When Billy breaks a window, the camera focuses on a particular shard of glass. He is later killed as a result of being impaled on that very shard.
- Elliot's lighter, which offends the ticket inspector on the train, is later used to enable Elliot to make a Molotov cocktail in a bid to escape from the McDonnells.
- Ethan's rape whistle gets used to distract a heavy who's got Elliot at his mercy.
- Ethan again; although the fact that he has an app on his phone that tracks Helen's movements is rightly called out as stalking, it does help him and Elliot to try and find Helen when she goes missing.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Or rather, Chekhov's 'Roos. Everyone talks about not wanting to drive at night in the Outback because the kangaroos go for the headlights (making it highly likely that you'll hit them, and an animal that size can do considerable damage to the front of a car). We don't get to see any until the last episode — in which, guess what, they do indeed go for the headlights, although an impact is avoided.
- In the second series, Ruairi's next-door neighbour seems like a one-shot character but is actually this, as she's later revealed to be the widow of the real Elliot Stanley.
- Chekhov's Skill: Early on, it's mentioned that prior to interviewing The Man, Helen's police experience consists entirely of being a traffic cop. Ultimately, her speed camera spotting skills are what saves her and Elliot from being framed for murder.
- Cruel Mercy: In the final episode of the first series, Elliot finds out about the horrible things he did to Lena and her friends. He is willing to go to jail for it but Lena declines to talk to the cops. Having noticed that he has developed a conscience, she figures out that the guilt he will suffer for the rest of his life is the worst punishment she can offer him; prison would merely help him to assuage that guilt, and she wants him to have to live with it.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Hoo boy...
- DI Rogers has been diagnosed with cancer and is actually working for Kosta.
- Helen tried to kill herself after her father died. Ethan uses this as a means of convincing her that she should marry him because no other man would have her.
- And as for The Man ... Elliot was not just an accountant for Kosta's drug-smuggling operation, he was a key figure in that operation, coercing Lena and at least two other women to have their stomachs cut open in order to smuggle bags of heroin into Australia; the other two died after the bags exploded. When he learns of this, he's so disgusted that he tries to kill himself. Twice. In the second series, he finds out that he was a member of one of the two Feuding Families, and left Ireland after getting the wife of a member of the other family pregnant.
- The Determinator: Helen, especially in the second series.
- Didn't Think This Through: In his attempt to make amends with Helen (and, he hopes, win her back with his idea of a Grand Romantic Gesture) in the second series, Ethan does not seem to have considered the notion that she has moved on. Unlike her, he hires a car when he gets to Ireland (she, by contrast, has to rely on taxis) but does not consider the prospect that it may need to be refuelled at some point.
- Driven to Suicide: On learning of the extent of his criminality, Elliot tries to kill himself, first by trying to crash his car, and when that doesn't work, he tries overdosing on what is presumably paracetamol.
- A Family Affair: An accidental example. When The Man had an affair with (and impregnated) Donal's wife Claire, he did not know that he and Donal were cousins.
- Feuding Families: The Cassidys and the McDonnells have been feuding for many years and the situation has been made worse by the fact that they both run extensive criminal networks competing for control of the local criminal underworld. They have been at an uneasy peace since Joe Cassidy was killed but Elliot's return to Ireland starts the violence up again. It turns out that the heads of the two families are actually brother and sister.
- Fighting Irish: In the second series, we have the Cassidys and the McDonnells, two feuding Irish criminal families. The Man is shown to be more than capable of handling himself in a Bar Brawl.
- Fish out of Water: The Man is an Irishman who (initially) has no idea who he is, or why he's in Australia. In the second series, Helen takes on this role as an Aussie visiting Ireland and trying to find Elliot, who's been kidnapped.
- Foreshadowing: In the final episode, Helen spots a speed limit sign and slows down to obey it. This foreshadows her use of her speed camera knowledge to prove that DI Rogers is lying.
- Gaslighting: Ethan constantly belittles Helen, makes her think that no other man would want her and mocks her for thinking she can make a success of being a police officer.
- Global Ignorance: When her conversation with The Man shifts from her and Ethan's intended honeymoon plans to travel in general, Helen remarks that she'd love to see the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg; given that she had just mentioned that they were going to go to Florida (which has a city of that name, named after the Russian original), it seems that she may have fallen victim to this trope. It's an ambiguous case, though, since she specifically mentioned where Ethan wanted to go when she mentioned Florida, and it's never confirmed whether or not she knows that the St. Petersburg where the Winter Palace is is actually the Russian one note . It's possible that she simply assumes that The Man (with whom she shares the conversation) already understands the geographical distinction.
- Gruesome Grandparent: Niamh intended to kill her biological grandson, Fergal, because he was raised by and aligned with the McDonnells.
- Heel Realization: By the second series, Ethan seems to have realised how his behaviour affected Helen (to the point of joining a self-help group and correcting both himself and others over causal remarks that could be seen as misogynistic) and tries to make amends — although this is played for laughs to an extend, given that he quickly becomes The Load.
- Hidden Depths: Elliot is said to have been an accomplished ballet dancer as a younger man. He remembers nothing of this, but is shown to be a very good dancer in the final scene when Helen insists on hiring out a theatre to see what he can do.
- I Have Many Names: The Man finds out that his name is Elliot Stanley. It is, however, revealed in the second series that this was an alias, and his real name is Eugene Cassidy.
- Imaginary Friend: A somewhat sinister version. Kosta's brother Dimitri turns out to be an hallucination of the man Kostas thought he'd grow up to become; he thinks he died years ago, but in reality he's living in an ashram in India.
- Incest Is Relative: The second series ends with it being revealed that the Cassidys and the McDonnells are related due to the adultery of at least one earlier generation. Ethan makes a remark about incest, following which he quickly leaves the pub before someone beats him up for pointing this out.
- Insistent Terminology: Probationary Constable Helen Chambers.
- I Reject Your Reality: After The Reveal at the end of the second series, Niamh angrily refuses to accept that she is a half-sister of her sworn enemy.
- Jerkass: Ethan (Helen's fiancé), who constantly belittles her over he weight and tries to convince her that she's not good enough to be a police officer. She eventually calls him out on this, and dumps him.
- Kissing Cousins: Albeit unknowingly. Before leaving Ireland, Eugene Cassidy (a.k.a. Elliot Stanley, a.k.a. The Man) had an affair with Frank McDonnell's daughter-in-law and fathered a child with her. Turns out, Frank is Eugene's biological uncle.
- Land Down Under: In the first series, the action takes place in the Australian Outback.
- Loss of Identity: Jamie Dornan's character can't remember his name or where he comes from or why he was in the Australian Outback to begin with. For the majority of the first episode he doesn't even get a temporary name, instead just continuing on nameless. In the credits, he is simply "The Man".
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Elliot is revealed, via DNA evidence from the kidnapping scene, to be the biological father of Fergal McDonnell. Later, it is revealed that Niamh was likely fathered by Frank McDonnell's dad, making them half-siblings. Evidently, sleeping with the wives of enemy family members was an ongoing thing in the Cassidy-McDonnell feud.
- Mistaken for Murderer: When Ruairi goes to a hardware store and buys a shovel, some duct tape and a pair of heavy-duty rubber gloves, the cashier jokingly asks if he's murdered someone and is trying to dispose of the body. Ruairi's laughing response seems a little too forced, given that the second part of the question is, in fact, true.
- Police Are Useless: In season 2, the local Irish police turn out to be useless because they refuse to investigate any crime that might involve the Cassidys or the McDonnells.
- Quest for Identity: The whole basis of the plot is The Man trying to find out who he is, and where he was going before the crash.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: The first series ends with Elliot, having just washed a load of pills down with vodka in a second attempt to kill himself, receiving a text from Helen, who had previously told him she wanted nothing more to do with him after learning of his criminal past. He smiles as the scene cuts to black for the closing credits.
- Relationship Upgrade: By the start of the second series, Elliot and Helen are in a relationship.
- The Reveal:
- At the end of the third episode, Luci tells The Man that his name is Elliot Stanley.
- Season 2 reveals that he is Eugene Cassidy and Elliot Stanley was just an alias.
- The climax of season 2 reveals that the heads of the the Cassidy and McDonnell families are half-siblings.
- The final scene of season 2 reveals that The Man/Elliot/Eugene might have actually been an undercover police officer.
- Revenge by Proxy: Lena shoots Helen in the stomach so The Man will have to live with the pain of watching a loved one die, just like she did. Fortunately Helen survives the ordeal.
- Running Joke: A couple.
- Everyone reacts with bewilderment because the owner of the gas station insists on people signing a register before he will give them the key to the outside toilet.
- The question "What shoots but doesn't kill?" is asked several times throughout the series and every time is responded to with the same incorrect, if logical, answer.
- Rural Gangsters:
- The crux of the first season is revealed to link to a drug empire that runs throughout the Australian outback, where the drugs are smuggled into the country in the stomachs of trafficked drug mules, and then distributed under the supervision of "Big" Billy Nixon (a stereotypical Texan who dresses like a cowboy), who uses his long-distance trucking company to secretly smuggle the drugs. Likewise whilst it implied the ring leader, the international Greek crime boss Kosta is based and regularly operates in more urban surroundings, he has several traits in common with the country setting, such as being introduced out boar hunting in the woods which he'd done since boyhood.
- Season two introduces the Cassady's (for whom the Man happens to be a member, an Irish Mob crime family who, whilst their territory extends into the nearby towns, are based within a small village in largely rural Ireland. Niamh Cassidy's men dress like labourers and she possesses massive amounts of sway and support in the local community, partially due to her reinvesting her profits within it. This stands in contrast to their rivals the McDonnel's who use a whiskey distillery in town they own as their base and have a more urban and sophisticated presentation (something Niamh even mocks when rallying her troops whilst holding a meeting at her base of operations, her families pub).
- Saved by Canon: Viewers watching the first series from mid-to-late 2023 onwards must surely have been aware that The Man and Helen would survive, given that it was widely reported that Jamie Dornan and Danielle Macdonald were filming the second series.
- Serial Homewrecker: In season 1, The Man learns that he had previously run off with Kosta's girlfriend, Luci. Then in season 2 he discovers that he had an affair with Donal McDonnell's wife and is the biological father of Fergal McDonnell. Both of these revelations have massive consequences for the plot.
- Shout-Out:
- When The Man is revisits the gas station he was at just before the crash, he's revealed to have signed his name as ""Crocodile" Dundee" on the toilet register.
- When they go on the run, The Man and Helen are compared to Bonnie and Clyde and Thelma & Louise.
- When trying to explain the Cassidy-McDonnell feud to Helen, Ruairi asks her if she has heard of Hatfields & McCoys.
- Although it's not mentioned outright, Ruairi himself exhibits behaviour similar to that of Norman Bates.
- Stuff Blowing Up: The diner in the first episode, which The Man visits because there was a note in the pocket of his jeans telling him to be there at a certain time. Luci (who is later revealed to have written the note) ushers him out just before the explosion.
- Terminally-Ill Criminal: DI Lachlan Rogers, formerly an exemplary detective, upon discovering he had six months left to live from terminal stomach cancer, turned to moonlighting as an enforcer for Kosta so that he could acquire enough money to ensure his wife was looked after for the rest of her life.
- There Is Only One Bed: The Man sleeps on the floor of the honeymoon suite after he and Helen enjoy a drunken meal while on the run. Becomes a case of What Did I Do Last Night? when they both wake up in the bed the following morning, although Helen swears they just kissed.
- Time Skip: The second series begins some 14 months after the first series ends.
- Token Good Teammate: Fergal is by far the least evil of the McDonnells, and really isn't cut out for the life of crime he was born into.
- The Unreveal: We never learn Luci's real name. Even Victoria, the name Elliot knew her by pre-amnesia, was another alias.
- What Did I Do Last Night?: Elliot and Helen wake up in bed together after getting drunk while on the run. She swears they just kissed, although she may not remember everything from the night before.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After Elliot escapes from the island, we hear no more of Orla McDonnell.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: The Man queries why Donal's parents named him thusly, given that their surname was McDonnell. Lena later expresses surprise at there being so many Donal McDonnells listed in the Irish phonebooks.
- Would Hit a Girl: Donal McDonnell was a wife-beater even before he found out that his wife Claire had slept with Elliot.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When Helen goes to the airport, she's shocked to encounter Ethan and Ruairi, who are planning to visit Budapest together.
