Spooky sci-fi set on an isolated oil rig returns in season two of The Rig – streaming on Prime Video. Its characters are thrown into a new set of dire machinations, deadly mystery, and devious manoeuvrings, reports Adam Fresco.
Well, colour me guiltily pleasured all over the place, because despite being alternately tense, twisted, dramatic, and downright bonkers, The Rig is back, and remains damn entertaining, addictively bingeworthy TV.
The fast-paced first season drilled down deep into the drama, with six episodes introducing a disparate group of workers on a remote North Sea oil rig. The top-notch cast of TV stalwarts include Game of Thrones and Silo star Iain Glen as level-headed hero Magnus, Line of Duty lead Martin Compston as Fulmer, Schitt’s Creek star Emily Hampshire as Rose, and Abraham Popoola of The Great as Easter.
Supporting the leads are a host of reliable and recognisable faces, including Rochenda Sandall, Owen Teale, Mark Addy, Alice Krige and Molly Vevers. All stranded at sea, off the coast of Scotland, aboard the Kinloch Bravo oil rig, cut off from the world when a strange fog engulfs them… and things start to get weird. Then creepy. Then downright deadly.
With shades of science fiction, and a good dollop of the supernatural, the first season of The Rig offered a tightly plotted mystery drama, pitting a bunch of angry, scared, and mismatched crew against each other and the unknown forces keeping them trapped at sea. There was plenty of paranoia as suspicion fell first on co-workers, then those in charge of operations, and ultimately on Pictor, the shady, profit-over-people corporation behind the rig’s operation.
At the centre of it all, poor old Iain Glen’s Magnus can barely fend off the perfect storm of mutinous rig workers, raging North Sea storms, strange fogs, unexplained accidents, sudden explosions, and eerie events. As the claustrophobia and tension mount, and the crew continue to battle both supernatural and natural forces, company-man Coake (Mark Addy), helicopters in to take control of the ever-worsening situation.
Episode by episode, the secrets steadily seeped out. The characters’ backstories revealed more and more behind the mysterious circumstances besetting the hapless crew. Then things turned deadly, as young oil-worker Baz (Calvin Demba) bravely climbed the rig’s communication tower, only to fall to his certain death, and mysterious resurrection.
Was the cause alien? Ancient mystical magic? Supernatural? Or all too natural?
Nature is never far from the surface of The Rig. It’s a subtle-as-a-jackhammer subtext made clear by Scottish acting stalwart Mark Bonnar, playing wise old rig worker Alwyn, warning: “If you keep punching the Earth, it’s going to punch back.” But is the malevolent force Nature fighting back? Could it be that humanity is about to become victim to the very planet we have ravaged so long? Are we to be punished for throwing the natural order off balance? Or should we fight back because, as strident company-man Coake says (well, yells) to the embattled crew: “Nature isn’t a balance, it’s a war!”
If it is a war, it’s one the crew must fight in isolation. With communications cut, and the mainland impossible to reach, the first season ended on a mighty (undersea) cliff-hanger. Following unexplained accidents, strange deaths (if they’ll stay that way), a mighty earthquake and subsequent tsunami, the final episode of the first season left me hooked, dangling like Tom Cruise at the end of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning. Only covered in salt water, surrounded by thick fog, and clinging to a burning oil-rig.
Happily, the new season picks up right from where the first left off, as Coake’s rescue helicopter flies away from the wrecked rig, to a mysterious location. Those same tsunami waves that rocked the Kinloch Bravo’s North Sea base have devastated the coasts of mainland UK and Northern Europe. But rather than flying the surviving crew home to their loved ones, Coake’s helicopter transports them to The Stac, a new Pictor prototype rig, deep within the Arctic circle.
No spoilers here except to assure fans of the first season that things go from bad to even bloody worse, as the surviving Bravo crew, fresh from the fire, are thrown into a whole new frying pan of dire machinations, deadly mystery, and devious manoeuvrings.
When Rose’s old beau, and now CEO of the shady-as, profit-greedy Pictor company, Morgan Lennox (Scottish actor Ross Anderson) shows up at The Stac, loyalties become divided, suspicions heightened, and paranoia levels rise into the red-for-danger zone.
Morgan makes it abundantly clear that Pictor is a company keen to protect its reputation and share price, and will do pretty much anything to cover up its involvement in the catastrophic events that have devastated the UK and the North European coasts.
Agreeing to a dastardly deal with the corporate devil, Cat (Rochenda Sandall) and Hutton (Owen Teale) follow Lennox’s plan and head for the mainland, leaving their crewmates to battle freezing Arctic temperatures, and the fury of ancient forces unleashed during the events of the first season.
With the stakes raised in this return to The Rig, it’s not just our familiar heroes and antiheroes at risk, but possibly the whole of humanity. From a daring under-the-ice rescue, to increasingly dire circumstances, and unforeseen disasters, the plot spins wildly on, with more twists than an oil drill-head. Dark deeds of the past continue to be dragged into the light, as even darker deeds are undertaken by individuals trying to protect the company’s reputation, line their own pockets with crypto-currency, and save their own skins.
Having watched the first two episodes of the new season, I remain hooked. The show deftly picks up the threads left after the action of the first season. From the attempted mutiny, to the many mysteries brought to the surface, and character revelations, this new season continues to offer a fast-paced, genre-melding blend of sci-fi, mystery, and environmentally aware drama. It might not be subtle in its planet-saving message, but it sure is fun. With interesting characters, complete with heroes to root for, antiheroes you love to hate, big business machinations reminiscent of the Alien universe’s Weyland-Yutani white-collar bad guys, and mysteries worthy of The X-Files in its heyday, The Rig season 2 offers a big splash of action and suspense.
Better yet, it’s all delivered by a top-tier cast playing it refreshingly straight, with no knowing winks to camera, and a taut script guiding a narrative fast-paced enough to swim right past all the sinkholes created by the show’s outlandish logical leaps and outrageous plot twists.
Being all at sea hasn’t been this much fun since LL Cool J battled intelligent sharks in Deep Blue Sea. My advice? Curl up on the sofa, and dive into The Rig for a second season that picks up straight from the first and continues to deliver claustrophobic, character-driven, deep-sea drama with a sci-fi twist.
