Combine some burly Scotsmen on an isolated and cut-off oil rig with no hope of returning home while surrounded by a thick, menacing fog, and you have the perfect recipe for dissent and fear.
The most recent offering from Prime Video The Rig is a group of oil rig workers. The Kinloch Bravo is stranded after being cut off from the outside world by a thick and eerie fog. Radios, phones, and computer systems all go silent for no apparent reason.
To make matters worse, the oil workers learn that their employer, Pictor Energy, plans to decommission all of the rigs, leaving them broke and jobless.
Iain Glen plays Magsun, the offshore installation manager tasked with calming the irate workers eager to return home while figuring out how to reconnect with the beach, aka the mainland.
Emily Hampshire of Schitt’s Creek fame, who works as Pictor’s representative on the oil rig, is a good example of how, at the end of the day, all companies are heartless; at an oil pumping company, it’s ten times worse.
She has no qualms about sacrificing workers in order to pump more oil. Her romantic involvement with the communications officer does not help matters, which causes resentment among the other employees because he receives more benefits professionally than they do.
When junior oil worker Baz climbs the communication tower to repair the radios obscured by the supernatural fog, he falls from a great height. Hutton, played by Game of Thrones alumni Owen Teale, is skilled at causing havoc, much to the chagrin of the infallibly calm Magsun.
As Hutton (Owen Teale) incites workers to mutiny on the helipad at the end of the first episode, a seemingly reanimated Baz tells them it’s too late just as ash begins to fall on them.
By the third episode, it’s clear there’s something fishy going on, and Mother Nature may be fighting back against the erosion of her treasures.
Everyone is on edge as the body count rises, eager to get off the shaky structure where disasters multiply. The Rig’s premise is intriguing enough, but not enough to keep your attention for six episodes.
