The Rig: Amazon Prime Video thriller series review

The crew of the Kinloch Bravo oil platformsuspended over the Scottish North Sea, eagerly awaits the end of their shift to be able to return to the mainland and embrace their loved ones.
Inside the platform, the atmosphere is festive and full of anticipation, time ticking by as slowly as it seems to do when one is waiting. It is at that moment that The Rig presents the complex cast of characters who, during the duration of the six episodes, souls will be scratched by a mysterious fog which blocks them there.

Unable to ask for outside help and be able to escape, the oil rig as in the best horror traditions (though The rig winks at the thriller and does not venture into the horror seriality as it does The Terror for example) becomes a prison and hope only a flame that keeps them suspended.
The whole team has to face the crisis and not only the most urgent one – to survive and look for a solution to escape -, but also the one that pushes the crew members against each other due to the strong emotional and physical stress at the which they are subjected to and internal hardships of the crew.
Although they try to remain anchored to rationality and not fall victim to the traps of the mind, the fog that surrounds them risks endangering not only them, but also the rest of humanity.

Already from the synopsis, The rig it does not differ much from other TV series with a similar incipit. Even the direction, the grammar and the stylistic code and the progress of the story with the consequent narrative arcs of the characters do not differ from what is expected. The series, right from the opening bars, does not shine for originality nor does it try to conquer the viewer too much. Which is the real flaw of the series.

The rig draws on mystery stories and all those intriguing narrative situations in which the characters are placed dangerously under stress. The Kinloch Bravo turns into a mirror of society: there are those who try to keep calm and use their wits, those who are too scared to do anything and those who – like it or not – let themselves be overwhelmed, giving the worst of themselves. As we said, the story and the narrative arc are not the most original, but they use one of the most particular and effective devices.

The rig. Wild Mercury Productions, Amazon Studios.

To be well built is the character dynamics that move in a non-place. A place where they lived for a short period of time, which was their home and workplace, and where they developed bonds – both positive and negative – with crew members.
The decision to set the series on an oil rig proved to be successful. Both to trace all those narratives that The rig wants to bring back memories set in the midst of freezing seas, both for its potential as place of isolation from which it is impossible to escape.

This suffocating sense of abandonment he slips the crew into a state of mind characterized by danger first and paranoia later. A paranoia that is amplified by an accident involving a crew member.
The rig so he abandons that veiled reference to horror and mystery cinema to embrace a yellow storyline which becomes predominant. The thriller element emphasizes that feeling of already seen because of a gimmick that, in contemporary seriality, is inserted practically everywhere, no matter the genre of the show.

The rig. Wild Mercury Productions, Amazon Studios.

The rig it does not deviate from what it presents itself: a TV series equal to many others, although it uses the peculiarities of the genres it uses in its favor. But beyond that, it doesn’t go very far.
The acting, as well as the script and the development of the plot, are kept on a flat work that does not give many emotions. Although the showrunner tries to insert many themes – the pandemic and climate change among all -, the result is not the one hoped for due to one superficiality marked in staging them.
Also from aesthetic point of viewthe rating doesn’t stray far.

The North Sea, to recall the cold of the Scottish coasts, is represented by a cold and crystalline photograph that does not differ much from the common imagination that we have of northern European countries. Even the direction has no creative flashes of any kind, but follows the style of the survival genre first and thriller after in a practically scholastic way.
The rigtherefore, is one entertainment series like so many that oppress the choice of streaming platforms in a story that remains on a bland sufficiency.