Vigil creator says there is ‘another way to read the show’

The creator of Vigil has suggested that there’s “another way to read the show” than as a standard murder mystery.

The BBC drama came to an end on Sunday (26 September) with an explosive finale. You can read our recap here.

Appearing at a Bafta event earlier this week, writer and producer Tom Edge said that he hadn’t wanted to create a normal thriller series.

Instead, he wanted to look at how the mystery element, after deaths took place on the submarine, could help Amy (Suranne Jones) confront problems in her own life.

“It was important to us that that wasn’t thrown in as texture or anything else like that,” Edge said.

“I think there are a few different ways that you can enjoy the show, which is about Amy’s journey as she goes from being a land-dwelling person, whose life is quite compartmentalised into work and her relationship with the child in her life, and her emotional life over there.”

He continued: “She works hard to keep those things apart and then, in a way, that kind of felt very mythical. She’s swallowed into the belly of the beast and taken down into this kind of underworld, placed under huge pressure, with everything that allows her to function normally stripped away from her.

“There are no colleagues, no databases, there’s no authority in terms of her capacity to run things. She has to go to sleep behind this tiny thin curtain; her medication runs out as the days are extended, and she’s progressively shorn of all of the things that help her in her head and feel like she can do her job professionally, and cope, and survive.”

While a second season is yet to be confirmed, Anjli Mohindra – who starred as Tiffany Docherty – told Radio Times that “there’s been conversations” about a follow-up series.