Rogue Heroes, Line Riders & Canadiana

Rogue Heroes is available in the U.S. now on Epix. It’s worth running down. Based on Ben McIntyre’s outstanding narrative history of the founding of the British Special Air Service (SAS).

The casting is spot-on, especially the guy who plays Paddy Mayne. This is the work of Steven Knight, who brought us Taboo and Peaky Blinders. As with Peaky, Knight hits with a deliberately anachronistic rock soundtrack (mixed with appropriate period music). AC/DC’s If You Want Blood over an opening montage of the War in North Africa? Yeah, it works. It just does.

Knight has a special affinity for semi-mad, maladjusted, alcoholic men — who just happen to be the kind of men called for when the balloon goes up and the shit hits the fan.

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Samuel K. Dolan has staked out his piece of Frontier Partisan territory in the Southwest Borderlands in the early part of the 20th Century. He was gracious enough to send me a copy of his latest work, The Line Riders — and it’s excellent.

This is Frontier Partisan history done at a very high level — deeply researched, and delivered with the vivid storytelling this era deserves.

I love the material culture of the period — I sort of think of it as “Peak Frontier Partisan,” which may seem paradoxical, given that it was well past Turner’s “closing” of the American Frontier. But as Dolan so vividly illustrates, the early 20th century “liquor war” along the Border was the wildest of Wild Wests. And there’s plenty of Continuity & Persistence here — the border is still a wild frontier: As of today, the governor of Texas is deploying gunboats…

Dolan is deeply steeped in the lore and the landscape, which gives the work immediacy and power. Really good stuff.

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Stumbled across another YouTube channel that has a lot to offer to Frontier Partisans.

Canadiana is a documentary web series on the hunt for the most incredible stories in Canadian history. Featuring playful animations and scenic footage, the series follows host Adam Bunch as he travels across the country, exploring the tales that have made Canada the unique place it is today. From scandalous love triangles to secret experiments, from rebels and freedom fighters to pirates and assassins, we uncover the fascinating and the unexpected. This isn’t the history you learned in school.

And this one especially for Lane Batot: