BY MIKE METTLER – AUGUST 14, 2018

You just can’t keep a good series down. When Cinemax’s top-tier action series Strike Back signed off seemingly for good in 2015 after five über-thrilling series installments, all signs pointed to the show putting its legacy to rest after triumphantly biking off into the sunset.

But that was then and this is now, as was quite handily proven by the ace new team recruited for enacting the sacred and secret Section 20 missions comprising Strike Back: The Complete Fifth Season, out today (August 14) on Blu-ray and DVD via Cinemax/HBO. (The digital downloadable version of this season had been made available back on May 7.)

[Incidentally, if you’d like to get your own free copy of Season 5 on Blu-ray, just share your thoughts about the show in the comments section below that follows the interview text, and I will choose one lucky winner at random.]

To find out the full-on Section 20 scoop, I got on the line with SB S5 stalwarts Alin Sumarwata (Lance Corporal Gracie Novan), Warren Brown (Sergeant Thomas “Mac” McAllister), and Daniel MacPherson (Sergeant Samuel Wyatt) — all of whom, mind you, had gathered together in the early morning hours from the secret overseas location where they were shooting Season 6, set to air sometime later this year — to discuss certain specific language and dialogue choices, their favorite action sequences, and what each of their character’s respective theme songs might be.

And then there are three: from left, Brown, Sumarwata, and MacPherson are not to be messed with, whether in character or out.

Mike Mettler: Guys, thanks for calling me up for your new assignment. And since I’m the only American on the line, I’m the one who doesn’t have to “make up” his accent, right? [Alin and Daniel are Australian, and Warren is British.]

Daniel MacPherson: Ah, mate, I have a few technical notes on your accent! (all laugh heartily)

Mettler: Oh yeah, please help me out! (chuckles) Before we get into Season 5, is there anything you’re allowed to tell me about the season you’re filming now, and what it’s going to be about — or would you have to kill me? (more laughter)

Daniel: Not really, but we can say we’re pretty excited that we didn’t have to leave after the end of Season . . . (slight pause) uh, what, is it 5 or 6? It’s a different number in America, right?

Warren Brown: It’s different in America, yes. It’s known as Season 5 there. [Technically speaking, Series 1 starred Richard Armitage and Andrew Lincoln and the ensuing four seasons starred Philip Winchester and Sullivan Stapleton, but the series numbering in the United States does not include the Armitage-Lincoln season in its count.]

Mettler: I’m going to call it Season 6 while we’re talking since I’ve seen them all, but the U.S. Blu-ray calls it Season 5.

Alin Sumarwata: Yeah, there you go!

Daniel: You’re a Strike Back aficionado, so you get it. Well, it would have been a shame to leave this Section 20 where that season ended, and I feel it’s pretty exciting that we get to do more. We’re pretty pumped about that.

Mettler: And [semi-spoiler alert!] it would have been Alin’s fault if you didn’t get out of there alive, since she’s the one driving the vehicle out of the firestorm there at the end of the season.

Daniel: We remind her of that all the time. And you’ve got that nice big closeup at the end, which is the right way to finish the season (affects Alin’s character Gracie’s accent): “We gotta give it a f—ing go!”

Alin (says as Gracie): “I reckon I’ll give it a go!”

Daniel: Come on — you can’t take out the f-word there, because you say it everywhere else! (Alin laughs heartily)

The gang’s (mostly) all here: Winchester, standing at right, supervises how Section 20 carries his (and Sully’s) legacy.

Mettler: Alin has many of the best lines, including the one she says to Scott-slash-Sully when she calls him a dickhead in Episode 9 — “I wasn’t asking, dickhead!” [“Scott-slash-Sully” is the character Damien Scott, played by the aforementioned Sullivan Stapleton, a.k.a. Sully, in U.S. Seasons 1-4, who returns with his partner Michael Stonebridge, played by Philip Winchester, for U.S. Season 5’s final two episodes.]

Daniel: I think that’s the first thing Alin does when she gets a script. She goes through it to find where she can put in profanity.

Alin: It’s a constant negotiating process, but yeah — it’s gotta happen.

Mettler: It has to come across as being real, and it wouldn’t be Strike Back if the characters didn’t speak in real, expressive language in those moments.

Alin: True.

Warren: We all go through the scripts, mark them up, and ask, “We want to say this here” — and then we get told, “Sorry, Alin’s already got that one locked up.” (Alin laughs heartily)

Daniel: And then we go, “Come on!!!”

Alin: I’ve gotta say, it’s not nearly the amount that Sully got away with in the last season. I mean, it’s every second line for him!

Mettler: I asked Phil [Winchester] about that since those guys are both on network American TV now [Phil on Chicago Justice and now Law & Order: SVU, Sully on Blindspot], and how hard it must be to not say “f—” on NBC.

Daniel: I think Alin would struggle with that now, on a regular network.

Alin: I would, I would. (laughs)

Warren: I think Season 6 [U.S. Season 5, that is] has stained Alin forever.

Mettler: I know you guys are always so busy shooting, but do you ever get to watch finished episodes at all? Or do you just have to step away from them?

Alin: We watch them, like, three or four months later.

Warren: It aired in the U.K. literally like two or three weeks after we had finished [in 2017], so I managed to catch some in the U.K. And then we were in L.A. in the beginning of the year [2018] doing Strike Back interviews, and we managed to have watched the last six to ten episodes together, pretty much.

Binge Buddies: Brown (left) and MacPherson plot their next “Cinemax and chill” night.

Daniel: We watched them go to air pretty much like everyone else, in real time. Warren and I watched Episode 1 together at my house as it went to air on Cinemax [on February 2, 2018]. We watched the 7 o’clock East Coast [airing] and then the 8 o’clock follow-up, and then we took an hour off for dinner and a beer, and then we watched the 10 o’clock. When we were about to watch it for the fourth time in that one night, my wife was like, “Guys, you’ve watched it enough for tonight.” (laughs all around)

Mettler: “We get it, you guys like the show!” (laughs) You must have felt a little pressure to keep ratcheting up the action, especially for somebody like me who watches the show in full surround sound and on a high-end, hi-def system. And just when you think you’ve seen everything, we get trucks stopped on a highway with guys running around in orange jumpsuits and sh– blowing up all around you [in Episode 9] — so you guys keep bringing it. MJ [Bassett, Strike Back’s longtime executive producer and main director] has to get some credit for bringing it all up another notch.

Daniel: Ah, 100 percent. MJ is incredible. I mean, it’s super-explosive TV, unlike anything else on television. And if you get the chance to watch in your home setup like you do, that’s incredible. But also, I gotta say, a lot of things that were scripted that were bigger and more explosive — we didn’t get to do them in 6, but hopefully we’ll do them in 7. If you were blown away by 6 — if only you saw what they wanted to do, you know?

Warren: Just try to watch it with the f—ing sound off! (all laugh)

Alin shoots to thrill ‘n’ kill, immediately following her iconic one-take hallway battle in Episode 5.

Mettler: It may be hard for each of you to pick your favorite action sequence, but for Alin, I’m sure the one-take fight in the mansion in Episode 5 is something people bring up a lot. It came across almost as a masterpiece of ballet in a way, wouldn’t you say?

Alin: Ballet, did you say? Yeah yeah, and after doing it, it kind of sunk in that it is a dance! And it is quite an amazing camera shot. Before that, I had been training to do fight-oriented kind of martial arts, but at the end of the day, you do see it as being a dance, really.

Mettler: You also have kickboxing in your background, so to see you put on a dress and kick ass that way and not in your fatigues was pretty exciting.

Alin: Yeah, it was good fun.

Brown looks around the corner for his next victim/opponent, in Episode 8.

Mettler: It sure came across that way. And Warren, [Muay] Thai boxing is your thing. You’re a super-champ in that universe, right?

Alin: He’s a two-time world champion!

Warren: Yeah, that was my shtick! (chuckles)

Mettler: Right — you sure showed your skill in the cage match during Episode 3 that I almost wanted to call an “MMA Special.”

Warren: I did, I did. It was like stepping back in time there a little bit — getting ready for a fight. I remember on the day getting ready to shoot that, and all those memories of fight day came flooding back. I woke up in the morning and  — every day’s a big day, but that day it was like, “Right, I’m fighting today.”

And then putting the shorts on, and the setting is in an arena and there’s a crowd there, so it was so much like stepping back in time a bit. The added bonus was that I knew the outcome before I went into the arena. (all laugh)

Mettler: Since you were a longtime champ, did you give the stunt coordinators some pointers as to how you felt that fight should go?

Warren: For most of the fights throughout the series, the stunt team we have, both last year and this year, are fantastic. They put together the bulk of the fights. And you’re able to, when you’re going through them, ask for things and change them up a bit — but there’s not that much time because you’re shooting one thing, then you’re trying to get across in a little window what you’re trying to learn. But with the stuff they came up with, there really wasn’t much that needed any changing.

Daniel: I gave them a few pointers, though — I had no worries about speaking up about that! (all laugh)

Mettler: Thank God we have Dan there to round things out for everybody! (more laughter) And you’re an iron man with triathlon training yourself, so you’re not exactly a slouch.

MacPherson gets ready to lean into it, in Episode 5.

Daniel: Yeah. Unfortunately, there were no foot chases through the desert (laughter). All I needed was a couple of weapons and then outrun someone over the course of an episode (laughs again) — but, no, the shooting process we have is where that kind of endurance comes in. This is such an exhaustive process. It’s a six-month shoot. Every day is like an action film on steroids, so that’s where that kind of background came in to really help me.

Mettler: Especially in that jungle rain sequence toward the end of the season, in Episode 10.

Alin: Oh, that fight they had, the one with [the terrorist] Idrisi and Mac. . .

Daniel: Yeah, where Mac and Idrisi fight it out in the rain.

Warren: That fight was the single-most hardest day of my acting career. Just with those rain machines alone. . . It had been raining all week, and we had done quite a bit of rain machine stuff. When the weather’s great and then you’re wet, straightaway you go get warm afterwards. The day that we did that fight, the temperature had dropped considerably. And after the first take, knowing that we had a full day of this fight, the cold set in, and we knew that this was going to be pretty nasty.

Daniel: But for the viewer, it certainly added something to that fight.

Warren: Absolutely, it did, yeah.

Mettler: There was also an added element of family there, in Alin’s case. Both of you gentlemen shot at and/or killed her real-life husband, technically, right? [That would be Don Hany, who played the aforementioned terrorist leader, Omair Idrisi.]

Alin: (laughs) They did, actually! And I had a go at him too.

Daniel: Well, we all had a crack!

Mettler: He didn’t get a complex out of that, did he? I hope he came out of it okay. (laughter)

Daniel: Actually, Don was so great. In the tunnel sequence in Episode 2, when I actually shoot Idrisi, I did two in the chest and one in the head, to be fair. His reaction was so good, after I shot him in the head and we were running away, I said to Warren, “I think I just killed Don!” I was a little bit close, because we were still getting the hang of distances and firing blanks.

Alin: (incredulously) You shot him with a blank that close? Jeez, I’m only learning of this stuff now.

Family Affair, Surrender Style: MacPherson, Brown, and Roxanne McKee share bonding time (of sorts).

Mettler: I don’t want to be the cause of sending anyone into therapy here. Well, I mentioned the word “family,” and not by accident. When I asked Phil [Winchester] about the legacy of the show, he said that “family” was the key thing for him, and he thought everybody else felt that way too. And with this season you’re shooting now, which would have you coming up on doing 20 episodes yourselves as Section 20, would you agree everybody shares in that family feeling?

Daniel: I was sending my wife some messages and some videos of where we are at the moment, showing her what we were doing, and she said, “I wonder if Alin realizes she was getting two big brothers out of this?” (Alin laughs) But definitely, there is a family element to it the longer we spend time together, especially after coming together to do more [episodes].

Alin: We’ve also definitely learned way too much about one another. (all laugh) It’s especially something that comes out whenever we’re using weaponry, and a new person shows up. It’s like, “Do I really trust this person with that trigger finger? I know I trust these boys.” That’s the kind of stuff that comes out.

Daniel: I now understand the bond Phil and Sully had after doing four seasons of the show together, in the way we’re coming back now, and the bond we’re developing only after the first 10 [episodes]. There is a huge amount of trust you have to have not only in performance, but also in action and safety on this show. That bonds you closer than other jobs I’ve had, for sure.

Mettler: And there’s going to be a new boss this season, so are we allowed to say who’s running Section 20 now? Perhaps it’s somebody who’s not on the line with us here today?

Warren: If you saw the end of last season and know who is not with us any longer, inevitably, yes, we do need a new boss. I don’t think it’s for us to say who it is, however.

Mettler: You could raise your hands after I read out a short list of names, and I wouldn’t be able to see who you all agreed it was. (all laugh)

Daniel: That kind of job, if you look at the previous performance of Robson Green [who played Lieutenant Colonel Philip Locke in U.S. Seasons 3 and 4] and what Nina [Sosanya, who played Colonel Adeena Donovan] did last year [in U.S. Season 5] — they’re huge roles with huge chunks of dialogue, and you have to be able to command a very strong-willed group of actors. It takes a very special actor, a very powerful actor, and you’re always excited at who’s going to take those jobs and the names of who they’re going to cast in a role like that.

Warren: You certainly won’t be disappointed.

Mettler: I’m going to hold all of you to that, because I don’t expect to be disappointed. [The SoundBard adds: And I’m not! I won’t spoil it here, but if you feel you must know who it is, and must know right now, follow this link.]

And I know we’re coming up on the time bell here, so I actually have a music-related question for you guys. The theme of the show, “Short Change Hero” by The Heavy, fits so perfectly overall. . .

Alin: Ah, man, I wouldn’t change that theme song for the world! It’s so perfect.

Mettler: I totally agree with that. But if each of you were to choose a theme song for your own character, what would it be?

Daniel: Alin’s would have to be covered in profanity. (all laugh) For me, it would be “Higher Ground,” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers [their iconic 1989 Stevie Wonder cover] — just that big, chunky bass riff. I’d love just to enter into every scene with that as the intro.

Mettler: And you’d have to move your head all around like Flea does in every scene too, because he never stands still when he plays that bass line, either. I’d be down for seeing that.

Daniel: (laughs) That’s an online special feature right there!

Warren: After gutting Wyatt in Episode 3, for me, I think it would have to be “Mack the Knife.” (much laughter and “ooohs” ensue) But after this season, it could be Mark Morrison (sings), “Return of the Mack. . .” (more catcalls in the background)

Mettler: Okay, I like that for [U.S.] Season 6. Alin, to go with Gracie’s sort of ’80s-ish haircut, should her song be an ’80s classic, or something more modern?

Alin: It’s actually funny when I think about it, because I’ve kind of joked about Kanye [West]’s “Fade” (laughs) for some moods, but I actually became obsessed with Blake Fades after that, so. . .

Daniel: There is a song called “Living Next Door to Alan” [sic; by the oh-so-appropriately named Kevin Bloody Wilson], so. . . (all laugh)

Mettler: Since we have two Australians on the line here, I almost feel like we need to pick a Midnight Oil song like “Beds Are Burning,” or something like that.

Alin: Aww, yeah!

Daniel: Yeah, we need to get them in there. We need an Aussie playlist.

Mettler: That’s your assignment for [U.S.] Season 6. I mean, something has to play on the stereos in the cars you guys are always hotwiring in whatever foreign location you may be in right now — like maybe Malaysia, and/or Budapest, and/or whatever location you can’t confirm for me. (chuckles)

Daniel: Uh oh, we’re losing the signal, man — I can’t hear you. . . (all laugh)

Mettler: Okay, fine, I’ll just have to trace the country code to see where this is coming from, then. (Daniel laughs heartily) And lastly, how great is it shooting on real locations? Actually, literally being out in the field?

Alin: It’s brilliant! Definitely. Right, Daniel?

Daniel: Oh yeah. Personally, and this is from a performance note, I hate working in the city I live in. I hate driving to work and coming home in a “normal life.” I like to live in the vibe, live in the character, live in the world. And you just cannot create sets of backdrops like the real thing, especially not like the cities we’re in in Episode 6 in Season 6 [U.S. Season 5], like the desert we’re in in Jordan. And Season 7 [U.S. Season 6] won’t disappoint on that either.

Mettler: Good. And for Seasons 8 and 9 as well, because we all want to go as long as we can with it, right?

Alin: Count me in for Seasons 8 and 9, yeah.

Daniel: I want to keep this job going for as long as they’ll have me, yeah.

Warren: One thing I would love to try. Jordan and Budapest were hot, and it’s boiling hot wherever we are right now, so I’m keen to get in the snow! Maybe like have a James Bond chase going down a mountain.

Daniel: Oooh, very James Bond!

Mettler: I like that too. That’s the next location Phil and Sully can show up in too, because we may see them again, right?

Daniel: I think they’ll always want to come back. They love the show so much that they’ll always want to pop back. But, you know, we’ll see if Section 20 will let ’em.

Mettler: Then you’d have to call it Section 40, so you could double it.

Daniel: (laughs) We’ll call it 40-Plus.

The SoundBard Callback: Please leave your comments below if you wish to be entered into the SB S5 Blu-ray giveaway. I will choose the winner at random, and will send the Blu-ray to said winner directly after confirmation of address. Good luck!