Amazon orders UK-produced supernatural thriller ‘The Rig’ from up-and-coming writer

Amazon Prime Video has ordered a new UK-produced supernatural thriller series titled The Rig.

The six-part Amazon Original is being produced by Banijay UK-owned Wild Mercury Productions and created by up-and-coming writer David Macpherson in his first-time commission. It is being directed by John Strickland (Line Of Duty), who will also exec produce alongside Derek Wax (Humans).

The Rig will be the first Amazon Original series filmed exclusively in Scotland, on an oil rig and at FirstStage Studios, the new Scottish film and TV studio space in Edinburgh. Production is due to start next year.

The series follows the crew of the Kishorn Bravo oil rig, stationed off the Scottish coast in the North Sea. When the crew are due to return to the mainland, a mysterious and all-enveloping fog rolls through and they find themselves cut off from all communication with the shore and the outside world.

As the crew struggles to get to the bottom of the mystery, they are soon driven into a confrontation with forces beyond their imagination.

“The Rig is a brilliant story, expertly told, in the most dramatic of settings” said Georgia Brown, director of European Amazon Originals for Prime Video. “It asks searching questions about nature and the environment, about what it takes to survive and to be human, which feels very pertinent to the world we are living in now.”