Rig 45

Rig 45 is a Norwegian / British series set on an oil rig in the area of the ocean between Great Britain and Norway.

8 out of 10 stars. This was a wonderful murder mystery series that keeps you guessing. But, and this is a big but, the subtitles appear on top of each other which makes them unreadable. Kind of a big deal when much of the story is told in Norwegian. :0

The series consists of six one-hour episodes that start with the mysterious death of an oil rig worker, middle-aged Ritva who has a daughter on land. The company’s headquarters send out an investigator, Andrea. She’s incredibly unlikeable. She wants to blame it on Ritva’s problem with alcoholism so the company doesn’t have to pay her life insurance which would go to the daughter.

Before Andrea can leave to report her findings, a hurricane comes and no one can leave the rig. Then another oil rig worker is almost killed. Someone has put iron filings in his oxygen tank and removed the filter so he breathes in the shrapnel and begins coughing up blood. As his lungs fill with blood he stops breathing and the rig nurse must puncture his lung to help him breathe.

Andrea continues investigating, realizing that something is deeply wrong on the oil rig. Suspects are plenty. There’s Douglas, a Scottish murderer released from prison; Vidar, a Norwegian murderer released from prison; Jens, a former soldier; Mikkel, the rig manager, who threatens all of the workers regularly, especially the women and Mary who keeps making cryptic remarks about a man named Frederic who died on the rig years earlier. What she finds out rather quickly is that Douglas, Vidar, and Ritva were smuggling heroin and getting rich from it, but they didn’t share the spoils with any of the other crew. Before she can investigate further her throat is slit.

Already there are two dead and one hanging on by a thread. All of the oil rig workers have secrerts and most of them are really, really dangerous.

SPOILERS:
Since there are no wiki spoilers, here they are. Two years ago Mary, Pontus, Douglas, Mikkel, Yens, and Vidar were smuggling heroine and making tons of money. Another rig worker named Frederic found out and threatend to tell the police, so they all killed him and then concocted a story that he’d died of a heroin dose than launched himself off the helicopter pad into the ocean. Frederic had a sister named Petra. She’s the nurse using a fictitious last name. She fakes her death and then goes around killing off the rig workers one by one. Douglas is the one who murdered Andrea because she discovered his heroine operation and he didn’t want to go back to prison.

Deaths in order: (1) Ritva is drugged and falls from the harness which has been tampered with. (2) Andrea has her throat slit by Douglas. (3) Pontus survives breathing in shrapnel only to be killed in a gas explosion. (4) Mary is tied to a large barrel and drowned when the barrel is jettisoned into the ocean. (5) Vidar is frozen in the freezer when he’s locked in there after trying to killing everyone. (6) Jens and (7) Mikkel are blown up trying to get the heroine. (8) Douglas is shot with a flare in his chest and falls off the rig into the ocean. (9) Halvar is shot by the police sniper who mistakenly think he is the killer. Literally everyone dies except Petra who flies away as a victim rather than a murderer.

8 out of 10 stars. It’s really hard to find a murder mystery series that isn’t predictable but also gives you all the clues as they occur. However, the subtitles are all messed up. The words [SPEAKING NORWEGIAN] appears over the caption of the translation of what they’re saying. Now that’s careless.