Like many a police procedural, Vigil always begins with a cold open. This time round, however, it’s absolutely freezing. We are, as per, thrown headlong into a niche and tangentially Scottish military world where a murder has occurred.
The first series took place on board a nuclear submarine (the show is, confusingly, still named after the vessel), while the second split the action between an army airfield in Scotland and the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Wudyan. For its third outing, we find ourselves in the (real) Arctic region of Svalbard. The area is supposedly demilitarised, but four British special forces agents are working undercover at a research centre, and tonight their mission is to extract a Chinese scientist who has made a discovery that could either save or destroy the world.
En route, they’re ambushed by Russians who want whatever world-saving-or-destroying stuff she’s got. The scientist escapes – but one of the Brits later turns up dead in a Russian enclave. The action moves from (slightly less) snowcapped (than they used to be) mountains to the snuggly Glasgow bedroom of Vigil’s police protagonists: DCI Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) and her colleague and girlfriend DI Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie), who has spent the past year looking after the pair’s baby son, Fergal.
As far as I can gather, Silva and Longacre are relatively run-of-the-mill detectives, yet Vigil relies on them being assigned to cases that could feasibly trigger a third world war on at least an annual basis. You know when people say returning to work after maternity leave feels like a nice break from relentless childcare? I don’t think that applies when your first day back involves flying nearly to the north pole to investigate a murder while ensuring the UK avoids an international incident with Russia.
But at least Longacre gets some peace and quiet on the plane. Silva, to her slight chagrin, is ordered to stay on home turf. Little does she know that’s where the explosive drama is.
It’s climate conference season and a Scottish scientist has flown back from Svalbard with suspicious haste for the occasion. Moments after Silva doorsteps him at his university, he is blown up by a bomb in his lab. As she enters, another man runs out – a climate activist with a rather convoluted grudge.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
