Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Rig’ On Prime Video, About An Oil Rig Enshrouded By A Supernatural Fog

Nothing like a story about a crew stranded at sea, right? Nowhere to go, tensions running high, alliances being made and broken. Add in touches of the supernatural, and you’ve got some pretty heady drama. A new series on Prime Video takes that genre and puts the crew on an oil rig. Talk about stranded…

THE RIG: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Deep in the ocean, it looks like a rift opens up. On the surface, is the Kinloch Bravo, a massive oil rig.

The Gist: The staff on the Kinloch Bravo are coming to a rotation point, where many of them will go back to their families after their extended stint off the Scottish shore. The rig’s commander, Magnus (Iain Glen), is contending with that turnover plus the presence of Rose (Emily Hampshire), sent by the oil company to evaluate the Kinloch field and see if their money would be better spent elsewhere.

The staff due to rotate out are eager to leave, including the brash young technician Baz (Calvin Demba), who gets angry when he finds out he’s bumped from the next chopper out, with Fulmer (Martin Compston), the communications specialist, getting his seat. During an all-hands meeting, Magnus tells the crew that the next choppers out have been diverted to the Bravo’s sister rig because of an emergency. That stokes the anger of the people due to go home, especially Hutton (Owen Teale), a senior member of the crew who has been vocally critical of Magnus’ leadership.

Then the power goes out. As the crew scrambles to get the rig back online, Magnus decides to shut down the drill, over the objections of Rose. Fulmer finds that the radio to the mainland isn’t working. Once the power goes on, though, they have to contend with another problem: A thick fog enshrouds the entire rig, cutting visibility to almost nothing. In an effort to find out what’s going on, Magnus sends Fulmer and Baz up to the top of the communications tower, where the two rivals have a confrontation.

On the way down, Baz’s tether unhooks and he falls, leaving him critically injured. As Cat (Rochenda Sandall), the rig’s medic, does whatever she can to keep Baz alive, but knowing he needs to be airlifted to a hospital, Hutton rages against Magnus more than ever. But Hutton’s rage isn’t just pointed towards his boss; when he gets in Cat’s face about getting Baz better care, Cat takes him down, literally.

As Hutton stokes a staff revolt on the fog-shrouded helicopter platform, Magnus and Rose get wind of it; as Magnus drops some harsh truths about the company’s plans for the rig, though, someone surprising joins the group.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take The Terror or 1899 and update the setting to a modern day oil rig, and you get The Rig.

Our Take: Created by David Macpherson, The Rig fits well into the genre of “stranded crew turns on each other and forms alliances while trying to get home”, which we’ve seen a few examples of over the past few years. As with the examples we cite above, there’s a supernatural element to it that is somewhat minimized in the first episode but it readily apparent by the last scene, and we get the feeling that it’ll become more prominent as the season goes along.

The characters on the oil rig are mostly presented as what we consider “one-and-a-half-dimensional” characters. What do we mean by that? Well, they’re more than flat archetypes, but we just don’t have enough info about any of them to figure out where their motivations are. They range from the brash young guys like Baz to the grizzled veterans, who are both angry and bitter like Hutton and more sanguine and accepting, like Alwyn (Mark Bonnar). Rose is the corporate muckety-muck, who’s involved with the troubled Fulmer. Magnus is the old-school boss. That’s about all we know, and we’re not sure how much more we’ll find out.

What saves the show from being ridiculous is the acting. Starring alongside Hampshire is an all-star roster of British character actors, and they elevate their somewhat bland characters by taking whatever grains of personality they’re given and running with it. Because there’s so many characters to deal with and a number of different stories, a show like The Rig needs actors that can squeeze as much out of their limited characterizations as they can. And most of this cast is able to do that.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As ash starts falling, Baz shockingly comes up on deck. “It’s too late,” he says. “It’s already started.”

Sleeper Star: Of the main characters, Bonnar’s character Alwyn is the least defined in the first episode, but because Bonnar plays him with such world-weary resignation, he’s still really interesting to watch.

Most Pilot-y Line: Rose tells Fulmer she wanted to be a paleontologist, “What digging up dinosaurs?” he replies. “Yeah, except it was too much like living in the past. So now, I just get to work with them instead.” Dinosaurs, she means, though it’s not super clear by the way the dialogue is written.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While there isn’t a ton of character development as The Rig starts, the acting is excellent, and it makes the tension that’s building on the Kinloch Bravo feel palpable.

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.