Vigil, series 2, part 2 review: without the submarine this thriller is merely subpar
Without wishing to get overly political – these are the TV pages, after all – Middle Eastern terrorists who abduct women at the point of a gun are bad people. Anyone who has watched the news in recent months will have seen the horrific truth of these events.
*Warning: mild spoilers below*
But, with embarrassing timing, here is BBC One drama Vigil with the counter-view. DCI Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) and Squadron Leader Eliza Russell (Romola Garai) have been kidnapped. They’re bound and gagged in the back of a van then transported to a safe house, where Silva is subjected to a pistol-whipping and at various points they think they’re about to be executed. But guess what? It turns out these guys with guns are actually pretty nice!
They had no intention of killing anyone and only carried out the kidnapping because they wanted to draw attention to the real villains: the British, whose weapons have been used to kill women and children. “We only want justice. We want Britain to take responsibility for the deaths of civilians,” one of them explains, before the British rescue the hostages in an operation which entails shooting an innocent child in the head.
The top brass close ranks, because that’s how the dastardly British Establishment behaves, but Silva carries on investigating. Back in the UK, Detective Sergeant Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie) is sympathetic to the people who, hours earlier, had taken her partner hostage. “It looks like a family home,” she says when viewing footage of where Silva was held. A colleague explains that terrorists often use ordinary homes as cover and innocent people as human shields. Longacre looks sceptical.
Silva and Russell eventually escape into a scene lifted from Sex and the City 2, where they run into a souk and are sheltered by lovely Muslim women – girl power! – who help them despite not knowing who they’re running from. Meanwhile, Longacre has no function except to fret and get shot at.
Series one of Vigil was a ratings hit because it was a ridiculous thriller with a USP: a murder-mystery set within the confines of a submarine. Without that setting, it’s just another, drawn-out drama with a complex plot. Briefly, in episode six (all episodes are on iPlayer) the action moves to a cargo plane and there’s the promise of another tightly claustrophobic bit of TV, but it’s over before you know it. Jones has some nice moments – DCI Silva’s single-mindedness and ability to take out all-comers with an ankle sweep can be impressive – but she deserves a better story than this.