Murder BENEATH THE WAVES
Suranne Jones stars in a whodunnit with a difference – on a nuclear submarine
Bristling with enough nuclear firepower to wipe out distant cities within minutes and hidden far beneath the waves from the eyes of the enemy, she is Britain’s last line of defence in the event of all-out war.
But the Royal Navy submarine HMS Vigil is also the fascinating crime scene into which the detective heroine played by Suranne Jones (above) is plunged in a riveting new thriller.
Also starring Line Of Duty’s Martin Compston and Shaun Evans (Endeavour) as Navy personnel, alongside Rose Leslie (Downton Abbey) as a police officer, this six-part drama melds the tried and trusted genres of the submarine adventure and the whodunnit to create a fresh, unpredictable storyline.
After the sudden death of a sailor on board, a police investigation is required because Vigil was inside British waters when the tragedy occurred.
But as part of the 24/7 nuclear deterrent, the Trident submarine has to remain on its months-long patrol at sea and cannot come into port, so DCI Amy Silva (Jones) is helicoptered out alone to join the crew and discover what happened.
Now, cut off from the outside world, she must find out if the death was deliberate – and if so, who out of the 140 men and eight women on board might be the killer.
Yet as she goes about her police work, Silva finds herself coming up against the authority of the captain, Neil Newsome (Paterson Joseph), a man of iron will who has long been used to absolute obedience from all those under his command and whose only goals are maintaining vigilance for the enemy and keeping his boat hidden in the depths.
Though her police partner Kirsten Longacre (Leslie) is making inquiries on land, Silva has no one she can trust to turn to for help on board as she begins to uncover the unsettling dark secrets of a crew who have it in their powers to deliver Armageddon…
At the heart of the story, Jones is a winning action star: after her bravura depiction of mental illness in I Am Victoria a few weeks ago, here is proof of her wonderful versatility as a performer who is capable of taking on almost any role.
As writer Tom Edge delivers a fast-paced stream of surprises and cliffhangers that are sure to have you hooked after the first two episodes on Sunday and Monday, Vigil proves to be a forensically engineered entertainment, as surely on target and explosive as any laser-guided missile in the Navy’s arsenal.