WORSE THINGS happen at sea, we’re reliably informed. That’s cold comfort if you find yourself trapped on a fog-bound oil rig, at the mercy of inexplicable forces, high above the icy waters off the Scottish coast. “I always think of them as castles in the sea,” says David Macpherson, writer of The Rig, a new drama that collides the uncanny with the grit and grease of the North Sea oil industry. “They’re almost like a fortress, a haunted house – that feeling of isolation when you’re onboard and there’s literally nothing around and you have crashing waves and you’re chest-forward to whatever the elements throw at you.
“It’s a great place to set a drama, because you’ve got so much conflict already bubbling around the workplace. It’s a microcosm of society. Like in or , you put the crazy on top and it amplifies everything. I think it’s a fascinating world in itself, and then my genre heart comes out as we progress and
