Vigil.
If there’s one TV drama worth investing your time in on these frosty evenings, it’s BBC1’s Vigil, back for a second series. It’s intelligent and complex, and not easily predictable or wholly implausible like some more lightweight tv fodder.
This does mean that you need to concentrate, but that generally comes automatically because the action grasps your attention and doesn’t release it until after the closing credits, when you find yourself wondering if you could binge it all on iplayer.
The first series showed Suranne Jones’s DCI Amy Silva sent to investigate sinister events on a submarine. The restricted space and constant danger of air supply failing gave it a suffocating claustrophobic sense added to by the submarine’s nuclear capabilities, its vulnerability to attack by the Russians, and the muted beiges and greys of the functional interior - I almost didn’t want to watch.
This series sees Jones set off with her partner, the pregnant DS Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie) to an army base in the Scottish countryside where seven people have been killed due to a drone demonstration that has gone awry. The smooth, supremely confident and collected Vice-Marshal Marcus Grainger - the excellent Dougray Scott - is demonstrating the capabilities of four remote—controlled fighter drones capable of mounting devastating attacks without the need tor humans nearby. He is trying to impress a team of dignitaries from the fictional oil-wealthy Middle East dictatorship, Wudyan, the leader of which has already poured millions into the development of these weapons. The leader is about to hand over more millions to take ownership of these drones when something goes terribly wrong. No spoilers here, but it seems that someone with malign intent has taken over control of one of the drones.
There is a sister British Army training camp near Wudyan which has been participating in these trials. The squadron leader in charge there is Eliza Russell, played by Romana Garai. The question is, who has done such a terrible thing, and why?
Motives are not difficult to find. Not everyone believes that it is a great idea to hand over millions of pounds of lethal weapons to an autocracy which claims it will only use the weapons to control ‘terrorists’ in a neighbouring country. One person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, something which perhaps is less true of the real life equivalents of these countries where the Saudis are fighting rebels in Yemen who do seem to have terrorist affiliations. Still, like Saudi, Wudyan has a notoriously bad record on human rights itself. ‘ I don’t know why your country doesn’t report on our reforms!’ the Wudyan lead delegate snaps petulantly. Perhaps because journalists not echoing the party line are still imprisoned in Wudyan. Reforms have to be more than cosmetic.
DCI Silva working at the same location as her partner allows for some wonderful personal interactions. There is the concern for her pregnancy, which results in DCI Silva nagging her partner about keeping safe, and DS Longacre’s amused responses. There is the need to not show too much about personal feelings which arises whenever people working together are partners - after one horrific blast, Longacre runs to Silva, all shrieking anxiety, while Silva tries to respond with a degree of professional detachment. The coolest cucumber is Marcus Grainger, who rises from the supine position he was blown into with a hand extended to calm a worried minion ‘Fine thanks’ - but who is still gentlemanly enough to ask how Silva is.
Suranne Jones is, as ever, marvellous. She doesn’t distinguish herself with quirks (I’m not knocking them - the cake-eating Brenda Blethyn in Vera is a delight) but with sharp intelligence and efficiency. She is compassionate and fair, insisting that a suspect is referred to as that rather than as the instigator of the attack. Yet she is not beyond being assertive, as many women in senior roles have had to be in real life. When an army underling says he will ask if a character is free to talk to her, she murmurs that she could ask him herself. Her geometric dark bob slices the air as it sways from side to side - this is no bibbitty bobitty bob but a scalpel made of hair.
I have seen reviews that criticise Jones for playing her character straight. On the contrary, I think this adds so much more than any benign tic would do because it allows her expressive face and huge dark eyes to flash and show us exactly what her character is thinking. Whether she is in benign mood in the car with her partner or on high alert, she can shift into the different emotions that make up any person but do so while we clock what she’s thinking. It’s subtle, she is always calm - no emotionally incontinent female cliches for her - but the viewer gets to see that she is a well-rounded person who just happens to be extremely competent and conscientious.