The third series of Vigil on BBC One and iPlayer reunites Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie as detectives Amy Silva and Kirsten Longacre, but the new Arctic-set conspiracy thriller struggles to maintain tension despite its explosive premise. The show, which has become known for placing its police duo at the centre of world-threatening crises, now finds them navigating a murder in the Svalbard archipelago, a real-world demilitarised zone. The series opens with a cold open that is literally freezing, throwing viewers into a niche military world where a murder has occurred.
A New Geopolitical Crisis in the Arctic
The first series of Vigil was set aboard a nuclear submarine, while the second split its action between an army airfield in Scotland and the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Wudyan. For this third outing, the action moves to the Arctic region of Svalbard, an area supposedly demilitarised but where four British special forces agents are working undercover at a research centre. Their mission is to extract a Chinese scientist who has made a discovery that could either save or destroy the world. En route, they are ambushed by Russians who want the scientist's potentially world-altering discovery. The scientist escapes, but one of the British agents later turns up dead in a Russian enclave.
The story then shifts to Glasgow, where DCI Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) and her colleague and girlfriend DI Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie) are introduced. Longacre has spent the past year looking after the pair's baby son, Fergal. Silva and Longacre are portrayed as relatively run-of-the-mill detectives, yet Vigil relies on them being assigned to cases that could feasibly trigger a third world war on an annual basis. Longacre's first day back involves flying nearly to the North Pole to investigate a murder while ensuring the UK avoids an international incident with Russia.
Explosive Drama on Home Turf
Silva, to her slight chagrin, is ordered to stay on home turf, but that is where the explosive drama occurs. It is 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 convoluted grudge.
In the Arctic, the violence is more psychological. To keep the peace, Svalbard's Norwegian police chief must treat Russian and UK representatives with strict equality. That means the Russians are permitted to appoint their own detective, Col Zamorin, to the investigation. The question of whether he is friend or foe adds another layer of intrigue, as does the race to find the Chinese scientist and her mysterious discovery.
Over-Twisty Plot and Bland Leads
Vigil is not a standard murder mystery; each series is set on the precipice of an alarmingly realistic geopolitical crisis. The second series revolved around the sale of British arms to the Middle East. This time, themes include Russian expansionism, trollish diplomacy, and how the interests of the global energy industry trump concerns about the climate crisis. Over this chaotic backdrop of current affairs, a stream of individual deceptions plays out, with nearly every character harbouring a major secret. Like a global Line of Duty, the show is essentially about not being able to trust a soul in the police, the intelligence services, or the military. Rank is presented not as a guarantee against criminality but as a confirmation of it.
The problem, however, is that Vigil's twist-rate is too high for any revelation to land effectively. The levels of conspiracy are flummoxing and seemingly never-ending; just as one layer of lies is peeled off, another is confronted. The capacity to be surprised is stripped away in the process. If viewers cannot invest in the case, they need to be able to invest in the leads, but this is the show's weakest link. Silva is essentially a blank slate, with her closest personality trait being the putting on and taking off of a massive pair of reading glasses. Leslie assumes a very broad Glaswegian accent to play Longacre, whose defining characteristic is that she is quite nice. The pair's working relationship is not impeded by their romantic one, and their mild domestic friction never tips over into dramatic conflict.
The result is a mystery designed to wrongfoot the viewer to a tedious degree, playing out over a backdrop of urgent real-world jeopardy. Unfortunately, these two elements end up cancelling each other out. Vigil makes it hard to keep caring, even when the planet's future is at stake.
