“Vigil”, a claustrophobic thriller aboard a submarine

A concentrate of British know-how in terms of thriller under high tension! Vigil, miniseries in 6 volumes broadcast this Thursday at 8:55 pm on Arte and available on Arte.tv by the producers of Line of Duty and Bodyguard, suit Amy (Suranne Jones, ex-Doctor Fosterand Gentleman Jack), a Scottish inspector sent to investigate aboard a military submarine following the suicide of one of the crew members on patrol. The starting point of a thriller as breathtaking as it is suffocating, which seduced when it premiered at the opening of Series Mania and its broadcast on the BBC this fall more than 10 million Britons.

The opening scene shows a trawler being harped by something and inexorably sinks into the depths of the ocean with all of its crew. At a knot away, the golden ear of the HMS Vigil hears their distress call. Petty Officer Craig Burke (Martin Compston) argues that the ship should come to their rescue. He is opposed to an end of inadmissibility: the Vigil, which is part of the British nuclear deterrent Trident, must not reveal its position, nor put itself at the mercy of the building that sank the ship. Captain Newsome sends Burke to his bunk to calm down. A moment later, a member of the crew finds him dead, apparently the victim of a heroin overdose.

An investigation in a confined universe

Glasgow Police Commander Amy Silva is hoisted aboard the vessel to shed light on the death. A three-day mission in a confined, predominantly male universe, governed by iron discipline and hostile to the intervention of a female police officer in a military affair. An environment, moreover, which is not ideal for the one who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a tragedy which left her depressed and claustrophobic. Examination of Burke’s corpse quickly shows that the overdose has been staged and that she is dealing with a murder.

A parallel investigation in the Scottish fjords

On land, Lieutenant Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie, seen in Downton Abbey and Games of Thrones), her teammate at the police station and in life, is investigating a possible link between the murder of Burke and anti-nuclear activists. While Kirsten can send messages to the submarine, Amy does not have permission to communicate with the outside world so as not to jeopardize the position of the ship.

Since no one wants to cooperate, like Sherlock Holmes, Amy can only rely on these powers of deduction and observation to unmask the assassin. Like Doctor Watson, Kirsten Longacre will compete in ingenuity to transmit useful information to him that only Amy can decipher. “For me, the biggest challenge in the writing was to succeed in bringing together these two worlds, on land and under the sea, explains Tom Edge, the creator of the series in the file, by managing to hold only one and the same story over the six episodes. “

Formally a successful bias too: Kirsten Longacre’s Scottish fjords and raw energy give oxygen to Vigil’s claustrophobic promiscuity and Amy Silva’s neurotic character

A tangle of intrigue mixing intimate and geopolitical

From this mysterious murder in the manner of the novels of Agatha Christie the creator of the series Tom Edge (who notably contributed to the writing of Lovesick or The Crown) will unfold in the course of this two-part investigation a tangle of dense and captivating intrigues carried out with full speed.

Vigil intimate and geopolitical mix. Tom Edge explores the unfathomable ability of humans to complicate a situation. He was interested in the scandals which rocked the British navy in recent years: faulty submarines, crew members tested positive for cocaine, the Bugaled Breizh affair. He weaves his web from real events such as the invasive presence of Russian ships in the Channel and the North Sea. Despite some convoluted twists, Vigil is an underwater Cluedo that will keep you snorkeling for six episodes.