Wake (BBC)
Lions can be repelled with a chair. A blow to the nose deters sharks. But never try to keep a polar bear at bay by tying it up with a police baton. This will only work against it.
Every citizen on the Arctic archipelago of Spitsbergen is required to carry a gun, and not a wooden stick, when venturing outside settlements, police chief Henrik Becken (Jeppe Beck Laursen) explained in Vigil.
He presented visiting buyer Kirsten Longacre (Rose Leslie) with a high-powered shotgun: “Keep it loaded and on your shoulder,” he warned. ‘Polar bears move fast.’
The only predators we’ve seen so far in this snowbound action thriller are Russian special forces. But I would bet my last glacier coin that Kirsten and her boss Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) fight packs of hungry bears before the end of this six-parter.
We haven’t reached that point yet, because Amy is still at home in Scotland. She is not only Kirsten’s highest-ranking officer, but also her partner: the two women have a child together, which makes their work-life balance quite difficult.
Their relationship was established over the previous two series, and reminding us took up too much of the opening episode.
Kirsten Longacre (Rosie Leslie) and Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) are back on screen tonight in Vigil and Christopher Stevens’ verdict has been announced…
For a story that started with an attempted defection, when Chinese climate scientist Shen Jia (Naomi Yang) tried to flee Spitsbergen, and then a shootout, a murder investigation, a bombing of a university lab, another murder, and the kidnapping of a minister at gunpoint, this hour still managed to sag and drag.
But the central premise is strong. Sir Richard Shirreff, a former deputy commander of NATO, warned in the Daily Mail earlier this month that Spitsbergen could easily become the focus of a Third World War, and that Vigil’s plot may have been taken directly from his predictions.
Russia maintains a mining base on the islands, 930 kilometers north of Norway, under a 1920 treaty. The many rare minerals make this a much more attractive area than a century ago, especially now that melting sea ice means it could serve as a naval base in the Arctic.
If Putin stages a military provocation here, how will the West react? That’s up to Amy and Kirsten, who must discover whether Russia is behind the murders – or whether the denials of a handsome Moscow colonel (Tornike Gogrichiani) can be trusted.
The pristine landscape of Spitsbergen, with its clear skies and frozen mountains, has an almost moon-like beauty and gives the drama a special appeal. Crime shows like True Detective and The Killing started a tradition of staging murder investigations in unfamiliar settings with an ethereal atmosphere, but new backdrops are hard to come by.
It is also becoming a popular tourist destination. However, there are still more polar bears than people. Keep this in mind before booking a ski holiday.
