EXCLUSIVE: The creator of Prime Video‘s The Rig has detailed how he needed to strike a steadiness between penning an entertaining drama and tackling existential debates round local weather change.
David Macpherson has expanded the second season of the UK hit past the confines of Season 1’s oil rig, which he described as akin to Alien and its growth for sequel Aliens within the Eighties.
The sequence from the previous environmental coverage employee tackles quite a few themes and appears to the hurt our planet is experiencing as we speak, however Macpherson burdened that he’s cognisant of the necessity to entertain.
“Our present is at coronary heart a giant piece of leisure and being entertaining ought to come first,” he instructed Deadline. “It’s not about telling individuals what to suppose it’s about asking questions and opening up debates.”
Whereas he stated that TV creators don’t essentially have a “duty to teach,” he countered that exhibits “must have one thing to say and be greater than the characters and tales themselves.” “In case you are not doing that then what are you doing?,” posited the Scottish scribe.
The primary season of supernatural thriller The Rig, which was considered one of Amazon UK’s debut commissions, ended with the rescued crew watching as a tsunami destroyed the rig and headed in the direction of the shore, presumably wiping out the shoreline. Season 2 expands the precinct to an Arctic glacier. It begins with helicopters taking the survivors of the Kinloch Bravo to a brand new secret offshore facility referred to as the Stac. Right here, the trapped crew should take care of the emotional and bodily fallout of the devastating tsunami that destroyed the Bravo, and deal with swirling conspiracies, company conflicts, and new threats from the darkish depths of the world’s ocean. New cast Jacob Fortune-Lloyd and Alice Krige have jumped aboard Season 2 alongside the likes of Schitt’s Creek star Emily Hampshire, Martin Compston and Iain Glen.
“I needed to open up the present, do some world constructing and take the workforce to quite a lot of totally different locations,” added Macpherson. “Every part within the oil trade is huge and I needed to point out that ambition. I noticed it as a bit like Alien and Aliens, the place our first one may be very contained and this one is far more motion oriented.”
The growth was helped alongside by Line of Obligation director John Strickland, who joined Season 2 and introduced a “concentrate on story and character” together with being “very superb on the technical facet of issues,” based on Derek Wax, who runs Banijay-backed The Rig producer Wild Mercury Productions.
“I see issues from all sides”
The Rig
Macpherson is also penning New Footage’ adaptation of Geoff Dembicki’s The Petroleum Papers. His focus and knowhow on the surroundings is drawn from a number of locations, together with a former function as a local weather coverage advisor to a non-profit, a job woking for the Scottish authorities and his father being an oil employee.
“So I see issues from all sides,” he stated.
He added that oil employees aren’t the anti-environmentalists they’re generally made out to be. “From the skin there may be this stereotype that the women and men who do the job are stuffed with contradictions however that isn’t true. Typically they’re simply trapped in industries which might be the one choice for individuals from a sure a part of the world.”
Very similar to The Responder creator Tony Schumacher, who was once a policeman, or former physician and RAF officer Jed Mercurio, Macpherson has come to TV writing later in life. This, he stated, has given him a “huge hinterland of topics I find out about,” and he referred to as on others to attempt a unique profession earlier than turning to writing.
“I actually suppose having these life experiences helped me lots,” he added.
Wax, who produced BAFTA-winning BBC drama The Sixth Commandment, praised Amazon UK commissioners for taking an opportunity on Macpherson at a time after they had been nonetheless ironing out the streamer’s technique.
“Commissioners are sometimes occupied with writers with a really lengthy monitor report however selecting David was a daring factor to do,” he added. “They backed a comparatively unknown author and developed a present with us that had no casting hooked up in any respect however had been greenlighting based mostly on the energy of the script.”
Had they been pitched the present this 12 months, Wax posited that Amazon might not have taken such a big gamble given “the market has contracted and streaming growth has curtailed.”
Wax was “overwhelmed” by the response to Season 1, which he stated hit the tpoop-five Amazon charts in quite a few nations and, crucially, had a excessive completion price.
Because it aired, Macpherson stated he has had messages of assist from South Korea, Germany and Australia. “We had individuals from the oil trade get in contact, notably girls, who had been so glad at seeing themselves represented on display screen,” he added.
The Rig Season 2 launches on Prime Video globally on January 2.
