The Rig Season 2

Oil Be Back

The Rig
Series 2
6 episodes Jan 2 2025
UK Wild Mercury Productions

I had a lot of good things to say about the first series of The Rig, not least of which came down to the excellent acting skills of the ensemble cast including stand out performances from the likes of Iain Glen, Emily Hampshire, Owen Teale and Martin Compston. I also said I was unsure why the series was left open ended on a cliff hanger of sorts and, considering the title of the show, after the giant tsunami is released, surely the only place the helicopters carrying the survivors could possibly go is to another rig. Which is, it turns out, exactly what happens.

This one is a bigger, luxury rig which can also move itself around if needed but the majority of the surviving ‘extras’ from the first show are taken back to civilisation after signing problematic gagging orders by the company that is trying to end ‘the ancestor’, as the Cthulhu-like presence beneath the sea has been dubbed in the first series.

The problem with this second series is that, asides from the acting, it doesn’t really have a lot further it can push forward on the science fiction/horror element of the show, it seems to me. So we have the two characters played by Owen Teale and Rochenda Sandall going back to the broken, post tidal wave UK to look for Sandall’s character’s wife while the main cast from the last one are playing survival games on the new rig. That is to say, the human villain, Coke (played by Mark Addy) is trying to stop the mysterious species beneath the ocean while the crew of the previous rig are trying to stop him.

Now, don’t get me wrong... it’s fast paced, very dramatic and never gets boring at all. A pretty entertaining package all around, I would say... but it’s nothing really new it’s showing us here from last time around. At least not enough, I would say, to justify a second series. Also, the creature itself, while not in the background, certainly takes a seat far from the action for the most of the six episodes. None of the Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers style shenanigans in this series and the element of threat seems almost gone. It’s brought in every now and again but this second go round is more about the politics and butting heads of the various human cast trying to stop each other before it’s too late. This includes famous actress Alice Krige coming in as one of the big bosses of the company running the rigs. And, her character goes through a similar arc to what the underused (in this second series) Iain Glenn had to go through in the first one... coming out on the right side before the end of the last episode while the ambiguity of the allegiances of the character are explored by all and sundry.

The music is somewhat off in this one, I thought... at least in that you can kind of hear the temp track coming through and bleeding into the original score. I would be completely unsurprised if bits of Philip Glass alongside the main theme from The Terminator were used to temporarily score the rough cut of this show with, as the music feels more than just a little reminiscent of these too in certain areas.

Having said all that, big shout out to an actress called Molly Vevers in this. She’s a secondary character and doesn’t get all that many scenes but she’s got huge screen presence in the bits and pieces she’s in and she should be getting more work, I think. For this reason alone, I’m kind of hoping the series gets renewed for a third season at some point soon... while the story can easily be finished here, there’s a weird, last shot coda which I’m not entirely sure about (okay... I admit I didn’t understand what’s going on there and kinda don’t care truth be told) but The Rig has a good cast so I hope it gets picked up again.

And I don’t have much more to say about this one, I’m afraid. It was much ado about nothing but I still enjoyed it for what it was so would certainly be a part of the audience for a third part, if it comes up.

The Rig

The Day The
Rig Stood Still

The Rig
2023 UK
Six episodes January 6th release

Warning: The spoilers wake...

It’s funny.... I’ve never been that happy with Iain Glen as an actor for some reason... before now, that is. I guess I saw him playing a bunch of villain roles in Hollywood movies and always confused not liking the character with the actor playing with him. I’m ashamed for making that very obvious mistake, especially at my age in life but, there you go, that’s how it is... or rather, that’s how it was. Now though, I’ve seen him play a kind of anti-heroic, could go either way character in the new TV show The Rig and, I have to hand it to him, he’s excellent in this and I respect him a hell of a lot more as an actor. I’ll need to keep an eye out for some of the other stuff he’s done. He’s great here.

That being said, The Rig is not primarily Glen’s show, for sure. It’s one of those stories which has several ‘heroes’ (for want of a better word and before I start to wear out ‘protagonist’ as my regular substitute) and it’s a brilliant ensemble piece which lets you figure out just who the heroes and villains are and, well, like all good drama, it’s not that black and white with a lot of the characters.

Now, apart from Glen, I didn’t know any of the other names in this show but I sure recognised a lot of them. I’ve probably seen most of them here or there in other things so we have the likes of Emily Hampshire (oh right, just looked her up, I recognised her from Chapelwaite, the review of which will eventually pitch up here on this blog when I can schedule it in), Molly Vevers, Abraham Popoola, Rochenda Sandall, Martin Compston, Mark Bonnar, Mark Addy and Owen Teale. And they all, including many others in the cast (hey, I’m not going to do a huge list here), seemed like old friends to me. They are all obviously classic character actors and are absolutely perfect as an ensemble cast for this kind of thing. And Owen Teale, especially, should win the award for most ignorant and sustainably angriest man in existence here... he plays the wild card roguish element very well but, it’s the old ‘heart in the right place’ character option for him and I kind of appreciated the bluff and powder keg element he brings to the show.

The story is a slow burn of sorts although, when you think about what’s covered, you realise that there’s actually a fair amount going on in terms of character progression. The show appealed to me because it looked like it was going to play as something like another variant of The Thing, just set on an oil rig but, yeah, it’s actually a little more than that and, like a lot of the elements in the show, the perceived threat to the crew is not necessarily what it seems. The fact that Mark Bonnar’s reading a copy of John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes in the first couple of episodes is a bit of a giveaway and there’s definitely an ‘ancient ones’ Cthulhu vibe going on in the show as well. Without giving too much away, I would call this a kind of aquatic version of The Day The Earth Stood Still but, with the ‘alien’ life form pulling no punches and not hesitating in wiping out life on the planet if it’s not being listened to. So, yeah, there’s obviously a strong, environmental, ‘save the planet’ kind of thread running through the tale too.

One of the things which, at first, disappointed me and then fascinated me is that, as I intimated earlier, the characters are not clear cut. For example, Iain Glens character towards the end of the show seems to be vacillating between different courses of action in terms of attempting to find a way for his crew to survive a certain threat. One minute he’s going to go with the lead of the obligatory ‘human villain’ character, introduced at the start of episode four and then, suddenly looking at another option which presents itself. And then I realised that this is a nice touch by the writers because, asides from the tension created by not knowing with whom his character will side with, it certainly reflects the stresses and lack of clarity of real life, to some extent.

At the end of the day, I have to say that while The Rig isn’t the most spectacular show on television (although it does have some amazingly well designed shots, such as the longish opening shot of the first episode), it is quite good science fiction and the gradual unfolding of the story coupled with, as I said, a whole host of great actors, kept me entertained. What mainly disappointed me was the fact that it turned out to not be a mini series but, instead, leaves it all on a bit of a cliff hanger as to what will happen next. Thankfully, the show has just been renewed for a second season.

The thing is... and this is where the spoiler warning comes in folks, stop reading if you don’t want to know... I’m just not sure what more the writers could possibly have to say about the subject to sustain another series. At the end of the show, we witness a handful of survivors being taken away in two helicopters at the prelude of an ‘extinction level event’, as a huge tidal wave, the grand daddy of tsunamis, is about to wipe out Great Britain and, quite possibly, the rest of the world too. The Rig is quite badly destroyed by the start of this wave and then the survivors in the helicopters get hit with the revelation that the helicopter isn’t taking them home (probably wise, actually, since their homes are about to exist only under many fathoms under water) but somewhere else. But where? Such mystery. Well, I hate to be one of ‘those’ people but, since the majority of the land is about to be wiped out and the title of the show is... well... The Rig... I’m putting my money on the helicopters landing at another rig before long because, yeah, where else would they be going unless they want to change the title of the show and lose viewers who wouldn’t realise? We shall see, I guess. I’m hoping series two isn’t all that far away because, post pandemic (yeah, right, like that’s over), the gaps between seasons in TV shows seem to be getting so large that I often forget what happened last time around, in many cases. But, yeah, I think The Rig is worth a watch and I’m glad I saw this one.