Vigil, episode 3, review: decent drama, but let's hope the Royal Navy isn't watching this

Three episodes in, and Vigil (BBC One) is picking up. Hurrah! If you’ve stuck with the drama this far, then you’ve decided to cast aside any worries about the implausibilities in the plot or the inauthentic portrayal of a submarine and its crew. The reward is a thriller that is finally coming together. Plus, the nights are drawing in - what else are you going to do at 9pm on a Sunday?

Suranne Jones as DCI Amy Silva is still a ball of misery, albeit one who is impressively multi-skilled. Forensic testing? Medical know-how? The woman has got it all, and there she was hauling Martin Compston’s body out into the open again to establish that he was poisoned. Fair play to Compston for getting joint top-billing here when his performance has comprised five minutes of argy-bargy at the start, one video from beyond the grave and the rest of the time playing a corpse.

Two things were clear from the start of the show: that Silva was going to be stuck down there for a good while longer than three days, what with it being a six-episode series, and that the coxswain Elliot Glover (Shaun Evans) was not the nice bloke he pretended to be. So it turned out that Silva is trapped on board for another three weeks, and Glover has been hiding an affair with the doctor, Tiffany Docherty (Anjli Mohindra).

Silva’s backstory was fleshed out a bit more, with scenes explaining how she was no longer allowed access to her late partner’s daughter. Back on dry land, the parallel investigation was throwing up new leads and giving some screen time to Gary Lewis, always good but strangely under-used here as the police boss (or perhaps not so strange - it is a drama determined to place women at its centre).

Now MI5 are involved, and a Scottish politician who wants to scrap Trident. Burke had compromising pictures of Docherty, and there were some faked drug samples. Oh, and the threat of nuclear meltdown. And if I’m following it correctly, the Americans have sent a submarine to stalk Vigil through British waters because they’re annoyed about the death of two contractors. There’s a lot going on here.

The Royal Navy and MoD probably wouldn’t be thrilled with the portrayal of Britain’s nuclear submarines as knackered and teetering on the edge of another Fukushima, its crew falling asleep on the job after a night on the lash in Florida. But they can rest assured that nobody watching and enjoying this drama is taking it very seriously.