Rig 45

I'm 2 episodes deep & so far it has all the makings of a decent little show, but being that I've been around this kind of work ALL MY LIFE (not necessarily rig work, but pipeline & other associated work doing with safety, safety protocols, workmanship behavior, amount of people sent to investigate a workplace accident resulting in a loss of life...so, trust me, I've had this horrible experience & there's ALWAYS more than one person sent & the least of your worries is an internal rep who's making some sort of finding-OSHA, the "state", the company, who you're selling the product to/who "owns" the job, who the main company is, etc., at least are represented by AT LEAST one individual & usually a team each...this process is NEVER "hurried", no matter the production requirements being sacrificed, the time of year / holiday it happens to be, etc., the process is a very laborious, deliberate, almost "painfully" slow (I don't mean to make light of an job site accident claiming a life, just meaning it could seem like a lot of "we've already covered that a 100 times" or "why can't we go back to work yet, we've been cleared & done our updated safety training" type stuff)...

Plus, since we are "construction gurus", someone PLEASE explain to me HOW IN THE HECK a hurricane can be wreaking havoc in the North Atlantic Sea at Christmas Time of all seasons!?!?! LMAO!! I mean, I'm ALL IN with Global Climate Change, that's common sense at this point-and if you weren't on board before 2020, this spring (& actually HAVING a spring-meaning, not going straight from a "strong fall" to a "mild winter" to a "HOTTER THAN BALLS SUMMER" was awesome-but there's no way in HELL that they had a hurricane up there in May much less Christmas! Haha

This show, otherwise, so far is pretty good.

Just some pretty funny holes so far. And the females are striking, but I dare you to go onto a rig, pipeline ROW, other construction job & find me 3 of them, much less 1. (Not being sexist, just truthful! I love all God's creatures!

This is a murder mystery set in a confined area - and it largely succeeds (although by no means perfect). It is set in an oil rig, but it could equally have been a submarine, space station... Those complaining about it not being a true to life oil rig are missing the point - it's about the claustrophobic nature of the setting. If realism is sought, watch a documentary.

Ok, so first of all, I have absolutely ZERO idea what teglundsamuel was talking about when he said this had bad acting, writing, etc and gave it only one star. Only thing I can figure is that he stopped watching it about 5 minutes into episode 1. The reviewer that gave it 5 stars specifically says they stopped watching in episode 3 (which is when the 100% English stops and the subs are required more often), and because someone they thought was hot got killed, so they really have no basis to even write a review. And the person who gave it 6 stars was upset with the ending, and actually DID like basically everything about it until that point. I get that some people may not be happy with the ending, but it certainly doesn't warrant a reduction 4 stars for that alone. (also that review spoils the end and says who the killer is so I HIGHLY suggest you DO NOT read that review if you plan to watch this).

The writing is very reminiscent of David Lynch ala Twin Peaks or Mulholland Drive. This is a whodunit through and through, and should keep you guessing until about 15 minutes before the end of the final episode. The acting is really top-notch as well. I have never heard of any of these actors (being Canadian and English myself, I don't watch a lot of foreign productions), but I'm absolutely blown away by at least 2 of the stars. Namely the guy who played Halvar and the woman who played Petra. These 2 are on fire in this mini-series. To address what the last reviewer said about a good suspense is supposed to keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time, and have many twists and turns, etc.....this show has all that and then some! In fact there were so many twists and turns in the plot that at times it was actually hard to keep up (but in a good way, a REALLY good way).

In any case, I'm not a reviewer, as I'm sure you can tell, but after reading the last comment and seeing that this somehow only had a 5.4 rating, I simply HAD to write something so that other people will know that they should really give this a shot, and not rely on one person's obviously delusional opinion.

Trust me, if you're into a GREAT story, a murder mystery that will literally keep you guessing until the very end, exceptional acting and outstanding writing, then look no further. Give this a watch and I promise you'll be glad you did. (just be prepared for subtitles if you're an English speaker--about 65% of this IS in English but the rest is in 3 other languages)

SOLID 9/10

Good acting, great plot. An unexpected event less than half-way in that upends all the usual expectations of an investigative procedural, and works quite well.

The season 1 ending was a bit of a downer, but it did enable a strong start to season 2.

Season 2 started out well, despite having two very unlikable police leads, but after an early death the writing quality diminishes, and the survivors do more and more inexplicable things that throw you out of the show and should have been caught in quality control in whatever the modern version of "the dailies" is.

The scenery in the glory shots - where the day is clear, the water is still, and the rig and ship are sitting there - is spectacular.

A who dunnit on a Norwegian oil rig sounded promising but from the first clunky cgi images it disappoints. The Norwegian bit pretty much goes out of the window early on because.. well it's be too much trouble to read subtitles... so we get Dublin and Scottish accents cause that's foreign enough and every so often some subtitled Norwegian just to remind us it's foreign. It borrows shamelessly from Alien with the crawling through air ducts and steady decimation of the crew by an unknown killer. Ultimately by the time the murder is revealed I considered they were doing me a favour by finishing off the stragglers and bringing the series to an end.