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Critic Reviews
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I am much preferring Vigil 2: unlike the flatness of its predecessor, there’s a modicum of colour, action and life.
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Mainly, it is just a good crime thriller. A pacy opening episode keeps giving us juicy chief suspects, then shows them to be innocent, dead, or both. As the intrigue widens and the body count grows, DCI Silva’s home life turns her into a rounded human.
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The truth is not that Vigil season 2 necessarily does all that much wrong - it probably works as well as it could have done given the first season's contained plot, and the natural disparity between Scotland and Morocco, which doubles as Wudyan, helps to keep things visually arresting (when not in indiscriminate rooms). .... With other innovative thrillers doing boundary-pushing, genre-bending work - such as The Tourist and Wolf - this new run of Vigil feels bland by comparison.
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Vigil is still a solid, well-acted crime thriller. But I also have a sinking feeling that without its claustrophobic submarine setting, it might have lost its USP.
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It’s not stupidly implausible like series one, although anyone who works in the police/Armed Forces will probably watch with gritted teeth.
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The second series seems better so far (spoilers ahead), the drama happening in the skies and on dry land, not in the briny depths. But because its main focus is a military attack drone going rogue and killing seven people, much of the dialogue is very “tech nerd”.
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Terrorism, LGBT+ issues, PTSD: all are thrown into the mix, like blending a variety of, individually nutritious, vegetables to create an undrinkably thick smoothie. Where the first season of Vigil could always fall back on its basic premise – giving its detective no means of escape – this second outing finds it harder to sustain tension.