Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Vigil’ On Peacock, Where A Scottish Police Detective Conducts A Murder Investigation On A Nuclear Submarine

Shows and movies that take place on submarines give us anxiety, but in a good way. The anxiety that comes with the claustrophobia of working and sleeping in a metal tube hundreds of feet under water helps the tension of the drama on screen. Can that tension add to what on the surface (pun intended) is a standard murder-mystery miniseries? Read on for more.

VIGIL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A fishing trawler is shown in the middle of the vast Atlantic.

The Gist: As the trawler does its thing, it’s net is caught on something that pulls it extremely fast and starts dragging it under. It’s more than likely a submarine. The HMS Vigil, a British Trident sub in the area, sees that the trawler is being pulled down. One of the helmsmen, Chief Petty Officer Craig Burke (Martin Compston) insists that they should surface and help the fishermen who are destined to drown, but Captain Newsome (Paterson Joseph) tells them that their orders are to stay submerged and not give away their position. The captain relieves Burke from his post and tells him to cool off in his bunk.

Burke is soon found dead outside his bunk, powdered heroin around his nostrils. Because the sub was in British waters, the Royal Navy is required to bring in local police authorities to investigate. In Glasgow, DCI Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) is called in by her boss to talk to the naval authorities. They tell her that she will be embedded in the Vigil for three days to complete her investigation. Here’s the twist: Because of the boat’s mission, it can’t go into dock, and communications with the department will be limited to incoming messages.

Silva agrees to do it, despite some reservations about being in tight spaces under water. She asks her boss to have DC Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie) be her eyes and ears on shore, investigating Burke’s friends, family and on-land colleagues. Why? Because Longacre knows Silva intimately — until, recently, they were in a relationship.

After being lowered into the sub, it dives back down. Chief Petty Officer Glover (Shaun Evans), the boat’s coxswain, takes her where she needs to go. Already dismayed that Burke’s body hasn’t been taken off the sub in order to have an autopsy conducted, she starts talking to the crew, but gets a lot of resistance. When she examines the body with the help of the boat’s doctor, Tiffany Docherty (Anjli Mohindra), she sees that there is trauma on Burke’s neck, and no evidence that the heroin on his nose was actually snorted by him. In other words, he was murdered.

When she presents the theory to Captain Newsome, he tells her that she should not give that theory to the crew, and that she should be following his orders. With Glover, the captain privately tries to figure out how to manage Silva’s activities without her suspicions getting out. One of the reasons is that they were not the sub that dragged down the trawler, meaning one was right next to them, representing an unprecedented national security threat.

On land, Longacre questions a woman claiming to be Burke’s girlfriend, who was seen outside his on-base quarters with his key and ID. She knew Burke was dead, but when Longacre tells her how, she says that can’t be the case. It sends Longacre back to the base, where she finds a thumb drive containing a video of Burke explaining how to bring the Vigil down. Right as that’s happening, the sub mysteriously loses all power.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Think of a serialized British police drama like Broadchurch, combined with the confined submarine setting of Das Boot.

Our Take: Just by the nature of the show’s setting, Vigil creator Tom Edge (C.B. Strike) has made a show that at the very least has a unique setting. Putting a police detective in the confined sensory deprivation environment of a submarine automatically adds a layer of tension that other UK-based detective series sometimes lack. We just hope that the series isn’t sidetracked by story elements that feel a bit superfluous, at least at first glance.

One side issue is just what happened between Silva and Longacre. They were together, but there was what looked like another relationship there, Silva’s husband and son. Were they a throuple? What was the relationship? It’s not clear in the first episode, and the questions about it detract from Silva and Longacre trying to solve Burke’s murder.

We do know that a tragedy suffered by Silva and Longacre not only broke them up, but it contributes to the anxiety Silva feels as she’ll likely become trapped in the Vigil. There’s a glimpse of a flashback where a car that she’s in with her husband and son gets submerged in water, with the three of them trying to but their way out. Surviving such a tragedy would affect anyone, so the longer Silva is trapped on the sub, the more that trauma is going to come to the surface.

If examining Silva’s past relationships is the key to explaining her behavior on board, then the side story won’t be as big a distraction as we think. But there’s also the fact that Longacre is likely to discover a big coverup in the Scottish government, and that will complicate matters, too. We just hope that the resistance Silva gets from the crew, along with the growing claustrophobia of being on board a sabotaged submarine will be the main dramatic push of Vigil, not the usual conspiracy plotline.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As the reactor on the Vigil shuts down, Silva starts to panic. Naval police train their guns on Longacre as Burke’s video plays on her laptop. “I’ve got some things to tell you,” he says to the camera.

Sleeper Star: Shaun Evans, who plays Glover, does a good job of playing both sides. As the boat’s coxswain, what he calls the “HR department”, he has the crew’s best interest in mind, and the ear of the captain — definitely more than the executive officer, Prentice (Adam James) does. But he also is there to assist Silva as much as he can without compromising the crew or the boat’s mission.

Most Pilot-y Line: When she boards the sub, Silva tells the XO that Burke’s body should have been taken off. “Too late for that. Welcome to the Vigil,” he tells her officiously. Yes, it’s the first sign that she’s not going to have it easy, but it was also a hard line to understand after a couple of listens. It had important information, but it was said so fast that it passed us by on the first viewing.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The unique setting of Vigil makes it stand out from the many UK-based police procedurals out there. We just hope that the show focuses on the claustrophobia of the sub and doesn’t get bogged down in other story elements that might prove to be distracting.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Vigil On Peacock