Vigil

Tom Edge's Vigil launched on BBC One on 29 August 2021 to become the channel's most-watched new drama of the year, drawing 10.2 million viewers across its first week. Produced by World Productions — the company behind Line of Duty and Bodyguard — the series established itself as the logical continuation of a strand of tightly engineered BBC thriller that prizes procedural rigour over melodrama. A second series followed in December 2023, relocating from the submarine to a land-based investigation centred on prototype drone technology.

Suranne Jones plays DCI Amy Silva, a police diver seconded to investigate a suspicious death aboard HMS Vigil, a nuclear submarine on active patrol. Rose Leslie plays her partner DS Kirsten Longacre, working the complementary investigation onshore. The first series is built around a formal conceit as simple as it is effective: the submarine setting creates total isolation, denying Silva backup, communication, and the basic investigative tools of her profession. Director James Strong and cinematographer Matt Gray shoot the underwater sequences with a studied claustrophobia that makes each conversation feel like an interrogation. Martin Compston and Paterson Joseph anchor the submarine's supporting cast.

Series 1 won the International Emmy for Best Drama Series in 2022 and received a BAFTA nomination for Best Drama Series. Critics praised Edge's ability to sustain tension across a limited episode count without resorting to conspiratorial sprawl, and the series was credited with reviving appetite for the kind of closed-environment thriller that the BBC had pioneered in the early 2010s.