Martin Compston claims his latest TV show The Rig is far bigger than Line of Duty and admits there are no plans to bring the nation’s favourite cop show back.
Compston, 40, has revealed he is thrilled to have reached his biggest audience yet with Amazon Prime Video’s supernatural thriller. The Greenock-born actor is back for a second series of the oil rig tale, which he says is epic in scale compared to the BBC’s hit police series.
Compston said: “This is very different to Line of Duty. The Rig is just huge in scale and in its ambition in terms of the audience it can reach. Amazon Prime is available in 270 countries. That’s not only daunting to think about but makes this the biggest job I’ve ever had in terms of scope, bigger than Line of Duty. Everything about The Rig is big and bold. I’m just proud to be a part of it.”
On a potential return to play DI Steve Arnott in the cop classic, which also starred Adrian Dunbar and Vicky McClure, he added: “Genuinely, I find it so heartening that people still want us to come back after all this time. Unfortunately, there are no plans for more as far as I know. I would love to work with the guys again.
“Adrian and Vicky are two of my best friends and (writer) Jed Mercurio has been such an essential part of my career. But right now, we’re not doing any-thing different. We’d always take a big break between series and give it time.”
Compston, who lives in Las Vegas with actress wife Tianna Chanel Flynn, 36, and their four-year-old son, added: “We definitely won’t come back just for the sake of it. It would need to be for the right reasons, and if there was a part of the story still to tell.”
Having been discovered as a teenager by director Ken Loach, who cast him straight from school in Sweet Sixteen, the budding footballer became one of Scotland’s most successful actors. He went on to play Glasgow gangster Paul Ferris in 2013 biopic The Wee Man and enjoyed a regular role in Monarch of the Glen and more recently in the TV series The Nest.
Now, he is back as rig worker Fulmer Hamilton in Season Two of The Rig. The show, which also stars Iain Glen and Schitt’s Creek actress Emily Hampshire, has been filmed at First Stage Studios in Leith a bonus for Compston.
He said: “We were blown away by how the first season went down, so to be able to come back to Scotland, to actually film in Scotland, in Edinburgh… was just a dream come true. It’s really special. Scotland has always been a great location for film and television but to be involved in something shot entirely in Scotland is really special.
“Outlander I think has opened up a whole new era of Scotland as a location. We’ve had Batman and Indiana Jones in Scotland, so it’s thriving there right now. It’s amazing to be able to go home and work with such talented crews and such great facilities.
“And it’s exciting as everything is even bigger and better this season. It’s huge. And it’s coming out on Amazon Prime right after everybody’s had their Christmas and Hogmanay, so the perfect time for a binge-watch.”
In the first season, viewers were gripped as a mysterious fog enveloped the Bravo oil rig in the North Sea.Compston promises things get even weirder this series, which continue the theme of nature fighting back against a backdrop of climate change.
He said: “We are dealing with the after effects of the huge tidal wave from the end of season one that has hit the east coast. We are dealing with major widespread devastation with only our core group knowing what really caused it. So the second season is about us dealing with that, with the effects of deep sea mining.
“Season two very much picks up from the first with the Bravo crew in the Arctic Circle dealing with what happened. There are some huge surprises, some major horrors and sci-fi elements to look forward to.” Compston is back in the role of radio and communications officer, Fulmer – who he describes as “really an ordinary guy who finds himself caught in this extraordinary situation.”
He said: “He’s one of a number of great characters devised by David Macpherson as part of the Bravo crew. The drama comes from the different relationships between the crew as they deal with these massive events.” He has been grateful to fellow Scot, Iain Glen who helped him cope with the special effects element of the show and the supernatural element of the story, including playing to green screen.
Compston said: “Iain Glen has been such a huge help. He’s done a lot more of that stuff than me and he’s an old RADA darling. Anything special-effectsy or earthquakey, I just take his lead because I can get really self-conscious about that stuff, whereas Iain loves it.
“But I have to say the special effects are incredible this year, they really are. I don’t want to spoil it but there’s something huge coming in episode six that really deserves to be on the big screen, it’s that good. It’s huge and emotional in a climate-change thriller kind of way.”
Don’t miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond – sign up to our daily newsletterhere.