David Pollock on Vigil – the new Sunday night drama from the team behind Line of Duty, gentle humour with Gone Fishing and a fascinating insight into the President’s War Room in the aftermath of 9/11.
In waters off the west coast of Scotland, a fishing trawler’s net is snagged by an unidentified submarine and the boat goes down with the loss of all hands. Under the waves, the British submarine HMS Vigil listens to it all happen, but they can’t intervene.
Their role as one of the country’s nuclear deterrent subs means they have to go undetected at all costs – even as Vigil’s Captain Newsome (Paterson Joseph) realises the sub which took out the trawler is shadowing his own ship undetected. Only one crewmember, Chief Petty Officer Craig Burke (Martin Compston) objects to what’s happened.
Then, amid a backdrop of recrimination and simmering background resentment, a member of the boat’s (a submarine is never a ship, we discover) crew is found dead of a drug overdose. The death occurred in British territorial waters, so Glasgow-based police detective Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) is asked to complete a formal investigation – by being winched by helicopter onto the sub’s conning tower and then released at sea on a raft a couple of days later.
Deeper and darker
All of the above incident occurs early in the opening episode of BBC One’s new prestige Sunday night drama Vigil, and – to paraphrase the show’s tagline – things only get deeper and darker from there. Silva navigates the politics, procedures and intense claustrophobia of submarine life, while on dry land her colleague and ex-lover DC Kirsten Longacre (played tough and resourceful by Rose Leslie) navigates Dunloch naval base and the nearby activist camp; the name is fictional, but it’s all a clear analogue for Faslane.
Jones is outstanding as ever, her unease at being trapped underwater cemented by a harrowing personal tragedy, while the crew – Joseph’s commanding but professionally untrusted Newsome, Adam James as his aggressive babysitter/second-in-command Prentice, Shaun Evans as thoughtful coxswain Grover – play out a sub-aquatic version of Star Trek. The series’ in-built commentary on the local and political dimensions of the UK’s nuclear capability has also been thoughtful and balanced, so far.
We can only hope it doesn’t go all Line of Duty ridiculous as the series progresses, because on the basis of the first two episodes, Vigil is an extremely classy, thrillingly well-conceived and intensively-researched drama. If it can sustain this early high watermark until the end, then we’ve easily found one of the telly highlights of the year, and the announcement of creator and writer Tom Edge as a major new talent in British drama.
Gone Fishing
Vigil wasn’t the only highlight of the week, and it bears tangential links to the other two shows which are well worth flagging up. First, the fourth series of Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (BBC Two) also took the pair to the west of Scotland, the Hebridean Isle of North Uist, and was as cuddly as ever in its blend of slow television, gorgeous scenery and bantering comedy. Their attempt at painting on the beach with local artist Alice was a highlight.
Historic documentary
At the scale’s other end, 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room (BBC One) dealt with the outbreak of a different Forever War, the one supposedly just finished in Afghanistan. It told the story of 9/11 in fascinating and unique detail, with minute-by-minute commentary from the truly major players; Bush, Rice, Powell et al. For better or worse, this historic documentary showed us how we got to where we are today.
