I can only imagine the commissioning pitch for Mad Dogs. Probably started off as ‘…it’s somewhat of a Fargo meets Twin Peaks meets Sexy Beast meets Mulholland Drive mash-up’. Thankfully and selfishly, for me, Mad Dogs was commissioned because it is pure guilty pleasure telly greatness.
 

To start with, it has an unbeatable cast including John Simm (Life on Mars, Doctor Who), Philip Glenister (Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes), Marc Warren (Hustle, and Max Beesley (Hotel Babylon). I’m mean, c’mon, it’s DCI Gene Hunt, the Master in Doctor Who, Danny Blue and Charlie Edwards all together. Mad Dogs starts out as an innocent long weekend for Rick, Baxter, Woody and Quinn with their mate Alvo at his villa in Majorca. Seems as though Alvo has paid for the whole trip, to celebrate with his closest friends the selling his business. That’s about the sanest split second in the entire first three series so far…

If you’re wondering what you are in for before you commit to a marathon catch-up, consider that the series begins with Alvo being murdered by a very small man wearing a Tony Blair mask, catapulting the ‘luxury weekend’ into a ‘holiday in hell’…and that’s being way too kind. The rest is impossible to explain without giving too much away. Actually, it’s just impossible to explain.
 

 
With series 3 set to being on Sky in the UK on Tuesday, 4 June at 9:00pm, anyone wanting to play catch up with a series 1 & 2 guilty pleasure telly marathon before June, you won’t regret it. And, if you are worrying that once you plow through series 1 & 2 and then watch series 3 that there will be no more, you can feel safe with the knowledge that a fourth and final series has been commissioned by Sky for transmission in 2014.

For UK readers or anyone else that has seen Mad Dogs, I’d be curious as to whether or not I’m alone in this Mad Dogs as a guilty pleasure thing….