Vigil - Line Of Duty on a submarine

[Custard]

Anyone caught any of this yet? The first two (of six) episodes are on the iPlayer. "From the makers of Line Of Duty", though you may be pleased to know Jed Mercurio has nothing to do with it.

Suranne Jones plays a police who boards a submarine to find out why Steve from Line Of Duty has gone died

It's surprisingly good so far, with the sinister undertones and claustrophobic feel of the submarine adding to the overall uneasy tone. There may have been a murrrrder

Suranne Jones plays Suranne Jones, and it's full of Game Of Thrones actors. Nice to hear Jones and Rose Leslie's characters are in a relationship. Taking that lovely image with me through the day

Anyway, this is alright I reckon. Might go shit before the end. Hope not

[mikeyg27]

Submarine Paranoia is maybe my favourite genre, so I'm all in on this.  I'm hoping that the spy is the cook.

It's so ridiculous. I admit I started laughing when

Spoiler alert

the flashbacks of the car crash

[close]

first appeared.

It gets some points for correct naming conventions for the boat.

[WhoMe]

Paterson Joseph is putting in a good shift as the captain. His abrupt delivery style is perfect for the stiff, uptight Navy Man role.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I really struggled with this. It's a thriller set on a Trident submarine, so you would expect a bit of suspense and, at the very least, a claustrophobic atmosphere. But no, it's weirdly uninvolving. There was nothing in the first two episodes to make me care about the characters or the central mystery. It's boring.

So that's what I thought of it.

[Magnum Valentino]

Also it feels like at the end of the second episode the central mystery is resolved, confessed to and everything, and it tacks on a "no! That's not it!".

Another FOUR episodes?!

[A Hat Like That]

It'll end with Rose Leslie bringing two lumps of plutonium together and Suranne Jones turning into a tree.

[jobotic]

Her back story is just ridiculous. Why do they have to do this?

[thugler]

Agree on there being no stakes.. They seem ridiculously worried about the submarine being briefly visible. It's not like Russia/China are waiting for one submarine to go wrong and will then launch a ton of nukes for a laugh. Agree that her backstory is annoying and cliche.

[Custard]

It'll end with Rose Leslie bringing two lumps of plutonium together and Suranne Jones turning into a tree.

And then them kissing. Please.

[A Hat Like That]

Agree on there being no stakes.. They seem ridiculously worried about the submarine being briefly visible. It's not like Russia/China are waiting for one submarine to go wrong and will then launch a ton of nukes for a laugh. Agree that her backstory is annoying and cliche.

There's the plot line about another submarine being in the area, but that was told and very much not shown.

[WhoMe]

Her back story is just ridiculous. Why do they have to do this?

Because the submarine will be breached somehow and she'll have to drag out that bloke who sat with her after her panic attack, with copious flashbacks.

No wait, it'll be a choice between saving him and someone else. Maybe the medic.

Were they actually being trailed by a mystery submarine by the way, or was that speculation?

[A Hat Like That]

Were they actually being trailed by a mystery submarine by the way, or was that speculation?

Well, glad that was resolved.

[mikeyg27]

I'm a little worried that this is going to end with someone saying "...and THAT'S why we had to renew Trident."

[poo]

Just watch 1st one utter shite

[Wayman C. McCreery]

The first two episodes were ok. The third one was piss.

I think it's to be one of those shows - like or Bodyguard or the later series of Line Of Duty - where everything is the result of a high-level conspiracy led by characters introduced five minutes before the end of the penultimate episode.

Jed Mercurio's got a lot to answer for. Although at least Jed throws a bit of misdirection in. This just signposts the twist 30 minutes before the reveal.

[mjwilson]

Huh, I had actually been assuming this was Mercurio, mostly because Steve was in it.

[A Hat Like That]

LOL at the early twist in this episode.

[Wayman C. McCreery]

This is absolute dogshit.

[jobotic]

LOL at the early twist in this episode.

Just watched it and I can't remember what that was.

[A Hat Like That]

Diplomatic immunity.

[mikeyg27]

Something that's been winding me up since the start of the 1st episode - I thought the whole point of four trident submarines was so that one was always on standby if something went wrong with the boat on patrol. I'm sure this came up as a reason why they couldn't get away with 3 subs when the new ones were announced.

Incidentally, that opening scene (I knew it would be either a dream or a drill) got me looking up reports about the failed Trident test launch a few years ago. This CNBC piece contains this bleakly-comic masterpiece of a line:

In what the newspaper describes as the only test of a British missile in four years, the unarmed missile veered off in the direction of the U.S. mainland, the exact opposite of the Royal Navy's intent.

[gilbertharding]

This submarine has now twice failed to detect a supertanker which is right on top of them. The lads on Das Boot are pissing themselves.

[jobotic]

It's comforting to know that our nuclear submarines can't detect whether there is anything above them when they go to surface.

"Probably won't be, will there? Have you seen how big the sea is?"

[gilbertharding]

I'm a little worried that this is going to end with someone saying "...and THAT'S why we had to renew Trident."

Oddly, my in-laws (Scots Tory boomers) are convinced that this is propaganda for why we (or, specifically an independent Scotland) need to get rid of Trident.

[mikeyg27]

This submarine has now twice failed to detect a supertanker which is right on top of them. The lads on Das Boot are pissing themselves.

The wikipedia page for Submarine Incidents since 2000 is alarmingly long. It really is a lot of fumbling around in the dark.

[gilbertharding]

So it seems...

Channel 5 are running a documentary series 'Submarine - Life Under the Waves' - a fly on the wall inside HMS Trenchant - an ancient nuclear powered hunter-killer sub. I wouldn't normally have watched it, except I was curious to compare it to the life depicted onboard HMS Vigilant (which I know is supposed to be a different class of boat).

They showed the boat taking steps to avoid clashing with the nets of a trawler. The voiceover explained that this was part of a strict protocol - without mentioning that HMS Trenchant was the very boat which inspired the incident at the start of Vigil, when it sunk the FV Antares, killing its four crew in 1990.

The documentary continues - a luckless idiot scalds his hand on a steam pipe and has to be transferred to a nearby ship.

One of the refrigerators fails, meaning that everyone has to eat all the fresh fruit, in the knowledge that they'll be living on tinned food for the rest of the voyage.

They spot a Russian submarine, which appears to be menacing the Trident sub Trenchant is supposed to be protecting. At no point is it explained what they're supposed to do about the Russians, partly because at that precise moment a fire breaks out somewhere on board.

Once the damage is assessed, it is decided that they have to return to Plymouth for repairs.

Reading ahead, it can be deduced that while alongside, the captain decides that the crew can have a barbeque. This party is held at the height of the Covid lockdown, so he is sacked.

I know they edit these things, but it really does look as if the entire submarine service is a fucking shambles. Obviously this could be considered useful to the RN, as it highlights the need for new equipment (and HMS Trenchard is now being decommissioned, and superseded) - but surely there's a limit to quite how useless they will want to be made to look?

[paruses]

Reading ahead, it can be deduced that while alongside, the captain decides that the crew can have a barbeque. This party is held at the height of the Covid lockdown, so he is sacked.

I saw this on the Recommended for You bar just as I was about to watch ep3. I forget how much I love submarine things. No idea why.

But on the matter of the bbq - there must be more to it than that. Surely they are all locked up in a metal tube for a couple of months anyway so standing closely and eating beef burgers makes no difference to them.

[gilbertharding]

Yeah, on the one hand, it's easy to forget how mad those first few months of covid were - newspapers running pictures of people 'packed' into parks, and denouncing those they suspected of taking over an hour of exercise a day. Using their weekly trip to the shops to also buy non-essential goods... And on the other hand, maybe the RN just wanted an excuse to get rid of him.

[mothman]

The RN has more admirals than ships, so you can imagine how many captains and commanders (this latter the normal rank you'd have commanding something the size of an attack submarine) they have kicking around. So might as well replace anyone who screws up even slightly, plenty of others waiting their turn...

[gilbertharding]

The RN has more admirals than ships, so you can imagine how many captains and commanders (this latter the normal rank you'd have commanding something the size of an attack submarine) they have kicking around. So might as well replace anyone who screws up even slightly, plenty of others waiting their turn...

Which reminds me - the skipper of the boat in Vigil was a Commander in the first episodes, but someone on twitter spotted that he's suddenly a Captain in episode 4...