Cinemax’s ‘Strike Back’ adds cast for new season

The “Strike Back” roster is going to be at maximum strength for next season, as the Cinemax action drama(*) has announced that all of its leads from the end of last season – Philip Winchester, Sullivan Stapleton and Rhona Mitra – will be back (along with supporting players Michlle Lukes and Liam Garrigan), and joined by newcomers Robson Green, Dougray Scott and Milauna Jackson.

(*) This will be the fourth season for the series overall, but the third since Cinemax partnered with the UK’s Sky and brought in Winchester and Stapleton as the leads.

Green, whose UK series “Touching Evil” and “Wire in the Blood” have aired here in America, will play a new member of Section 20, the elite British special forces unit that forms the hub of the show. Scott, whose most recent series “Hemlock Grove” will be debuting in April on Netflix, will play a “rogue operative,” while Jackson will be, according to the press release, “a key player who crosses paths with the counterterrorism team.” The new season will involve Section 20 pursuing a terrorist network “from Colombia to Beirut to Europe, uncovering deadly plots that reach to the West.”

I’ve written often of my fondness for this show, and I’ve been a Robson Green fan going back to the mid-’90s when I first saw “Touching Evil.” Sounds like more fun, and I’ll be curious to see how Mitra remains involved, since her character had resigned as head of Section 20 at the end of last season.

Production has already begun, and the new season will premiere this summer. Here’s a brief teaser: