Pieces of a Man:The Tourist.

"It's fine work you people do. It's fine work" - Billy Nixon.

Somewhere in the Australian outback, we see a man driving. We have no idea who that man is. After he's been forced off the road by a juggernaut (whose driver's face we don't see) and wakes up in hospital he has no idea who he is either. He doesn't even know his name.

The Man (Jamie Dornan) is thrust into a world of confusion, violence, betrayal, and murder and forced to make unlikely, and uncertain, alliances with those around him to both ensure his survival and, eventually, hopefully, recover his identity.

The Tourist (BBC1/iPlayer, written by Harry and Jack Williams and directed by Chris Sweeney and Daniel Nettheim) is an exciting adventure that constantly wrong-foots both the viewer and many of the central protagonists. It looks amazing, it's full of cliff-hangers, and it is completely and utterly unrealistic. 

Those looking for kitchen sink realism should look elsewhere. Those looking for a mangled and twisted story, punctuated often by intentionally bathetic humour, of a man all at sea in a world he fails to understand may have found what they're looking for. The question is, will The Man find what he is looking for - and when he does what will that say about him?

The first face he sees when regaining consciousness is that of inexperienced, bungling, and tactless - yet well meaning - police officer Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald). She asks him a few questions and learns, as we do, that The Man has no phone, no form of ID whatsoever, and no memory. He's in a wheelchair and, judging by his Irish accent, he's in a foreign country.

It's all very disorientating. The only clue he has is a note in his jeans pocket which reads "26th - 2.30 - Burnt Ridge - Gloria's Diner - Table 5" - with tittles over the letter Is. But here's the thing with The Tourist. It is not only The Man who seems to be in a bizarre, and frankly unlikely, set of circumstances. It's everyone else too.

Helen shares an odd life with her peculiar and coercive partner Ethan (Greg Larsen). She suffers a lack of confidence in her body and Ethan exploits this by controlling her diet and making her take dance lessons she doesn't seem keen on. When he's not bossing Helen around he's watching curling on TV and mispronouncing grandeur as grand-ee-ur!

Odder still, we're introduced to a man who has been buried alive in a barrel in the desert. Which, no matter how you slice it, doesn't sound much fun. When The Man reaches Gloria's Diner it becomes even more apparent that he is in big trouble. The incident with the truck was not a one off. At the soon to explode diner he meets with Luci (Shalom Brune-Franklin) and not, we soon learn, for the first time.

Luci's back story is about as clear as everyone else's and even when Detective Inspector Lachlan Rogers (Damon Herriman) from 'major crimes' is sent down from the big city to take on the case that only muddies the waters further. What's with all the regular 10am phone calls? Why does he insist on referrng to his unwanted, and starstruck, assistant Sergeant Rodney Lammon (Kamil Ellis) by the name of 'Lemon'? Is he hiding something?

It doesn't stop there. Psychotic whistling cowboy Billy Nixon (Olafur Darri Olafsson) is clearly up to no good and what's with the Greek guys? Kosta Panigiris (Alex Dimitriades) and his brother Dimitri (Alex Andreas) fly around on private jets, dance to cheesy Hellenic pop, gobble LSD like Smarties, and never seem far away from an outbreak of wanton violence.

As The Man searches to find out who he is, and who the fuck the rest of them are, he encounters storms, explosions, bizarre chess players, and all manner of weapons. Guns, crowbars, and scissors are all used to inflict violence, as well as the more traditional methods of punching, kicking, and headbutting.

There are scorpions, lizards, scorching heat, and torrential rain to contend with as well as a dude who has stopped the traffic so two endangered tortoises can copulate on the highway. There's a reference to the old Nokia game Snake, a soundtrack of The Ink Spots, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Gordon Lightfoot, Kim Carnes, and Lou Reed (Charley's Girl off Coney Island Baby, a deep cut), as well as some lovely outback shots, a bewildering purchase of a fluffy toy koala, and an ongoing theme of disgusting toilets.

There's a set of fake passports which all contain mixed up names of Spice Girls members (Melanie Adams, Geri Brown, Victoria Chisholm - although they missed out on a open goal with Geri Adams) and there are some really great lines. When The Man, after leaving hospital, takes his first beer he notes "fuck me, that's lovely. I hope I didn't use to be an alcoholic".

Many of the best lines are what you might call Aussie-isms:- "he bashed his melon in a car crash", "he's deaf as an adder", "I've been carrying on like a pork chop", and "two sausages short of a breakfast" (it seems rare when Aussie slang doesn't refer to either food or wild animals) and there's even an entire episode which is almost wholly devoted to an acid trip worthy of Bojack Horseman. 

It's all great fun but, at least until the final hour (of nearly six), it's not particularly emotionally involving. You stay tuned because you're enjoying the ride and you want to solve the mystery but it's hard to become attached to any individual character. The level of peril, for a start, is simply too high.

The Tourist, also - despite being very clever, is not quite as original as it seems to think it is. The opening scene is unapologetically nicked from Spielberg's 1971 debut Duel, the dude buried underground will take certain viewers back to George Sluizer's The Vanishing, and there are even scenes that reminded me of David Lynch's Twin Peaks. 

It would even be fair to say that the entire premise owes a lot to Christopher Nolan's Memento. But to call The Tourist a work of plagiarism seems harsh. A few caveats aside, it combined these disparate elements to tell a ripping yarn of redemption, identity, and justice while at the same time giving us plenty of set pieces, car chases, gunfights, and hold ups to enjoy. It wasn't as serious as some might have wanted it to be and it wasn't quite as funny as it sometimes tried to be but it was, above and beyond anything else, serious fun.