In the middle of the North Sea, no-one can hear you scream. Particularly when you’re trapped on an oil rig, a thick, enveloping fog is cutting out all communication with the outside world, and a mysterious ash billowing across this windswept scene is doing strange things to people’s insides.
At one point, the tortured Baz (a suitably wired Calvin Demba) crazily informs the crew, and us, that ‘there’s something out there’. It also appears to be inside him. Spooky. What ‘it’ is, though, is maddeningly withheld over six 50-minute episodes.
The best mystery thrillers make you wait for the Big Reveal, but outside the movie format it’s asking a lot of character development if, three hours in, you’re still looking at variously annoyed, bored and scared rig workers running around metal walkways wondering what’s going on.
Ultimately, they want to get off, and The Rig, in its desire to layer the claustrophobia excruciatingly slowly, runs the tightrope of inspiring the same desire from its viewers.
Which is a shame because there are some really interesting ideas here from debut writer David Macpherson. You could call it an eco-thriller, in fact, as the increasingly concerned petrochemical geologist Rose (Emily Hampshire of Schitt’s Creek fame) makes a connection between the strange spores in the ash and fossil fuel extraction.
Indeed, the romantic connection between Rose and the harried comms man Fulmer (Line Of Duty’s Martin Compston) is weirdly underwritten, in favour of seriously intoned mantras such as ‘if you keep punching the earth, it’s going to punch back’. More than once, the mantra is very seriously intoned. Life on the rig feels authentically researched too: tense, dangerous but monotonous work.
If only there had been a similarly nuanced approach to the character writing. It’s a big cast, led by the strangely uncharismatic Offshore Installation Manager Magnus MacMillan (Iain Glen in serious, reserved mode) but there’s the merest snippets of their inner lives and what they’re wanting to get home to.
The peril actually comes from the aggressive Head Driller, Hutton (Game of Thrones’ Owen Teale), going increasingly off-message as he rails against the company and the situation they’re in.
The ambition is to create a show that is equal parts action thriller, eco horror and domestic drama. The Rig doesn’t quite get the balance right, but there’s enough intrigue here to believe that the Big Reveal – if there is one – will be worth it.
