USA’s new event series “Dig” is not a simple murder mystery.
Premiering Thursday night on the cable network, the series stars Jason Isaacs (an alum of NBC’s “Awake” and the big screen “Harry Potter” franchise) as Peter Connelly, an FBI Agent stationed in Jerusalem, whose messed up personal life is bleeding into his job.
His marriage is at a standstill, he’s sleeping with his boss Lynn (Anne Heche) and his work is suffering too. While trying to track down a fugitive in the series premiere, he ends up turning his focus toward something else.
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“He becomes obsessive about solving this girl’s murder, and he starts to imagine a much bigger conspiracy than anyone believes in,” Jason told Access Hollywood.
The murder of the woman takes an incredible hold on Agent Connelly. Why exactly he becomes so focused on it will become clearer as the episodes roll out.
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“My backstory is absolutely key to what makes me obsess about this case, even when my career is falling apart and my relationships are falling apart, I want to solve this thing because of the stuff from my past,” Jason said.
The complexity of the case will test Peter’s limits, pushing the drama into action territory.
“Peter Connelly is not any kind of off-the-shelf hero,” Jason said. “I am spending my entire life jumping over walls and kicking doors open and running, but he’s got secrets, he’s haunted, and he’s got stuff going on behind the eyes and when you don’t have that [in a character], those parts are impossible to play, so he’s got things going on that are fun to play.”
And somehow, tied up in this murder mystery is a connection to groups with mysterious traditions and ancient practices, something that fascinated Jason when he had an early meeting with creators Tim Kring (“Heroes”) and Gideon Raff (“Homeland”).
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“I went to meet them, and I said, ‘Where did you get the idea? Where [did you get] these kind of crazy groups from?’ And they said, ‘Oh, that’s all true,'” Jason said.
“I was so stunned by that news I don’t remember the rest of the meeting and I rushed out of the meeting and I got on the Internet and I started Googling and Wikapedia-ing all this stuff,” he added.
Jason said the show may prompt viewers to do a little research of their own.
“I hope people that watch the show enjoy the whole roller coaster of the thriller and the conspiracy stuff and all the intriguing character work, but also, the extra bonus for the audience is they have to work out which bits of this stuff is real and which of these groups really exist and who are these people that are working to bring about our end because there’s lots of them, and they’re all around us here, in America, and around the world, and it’s kind of terrifying,” he said. “Apart from the fact that it was a brilliant, well written story, the idea that they’d fashioned this classic conspiracy thriller from real events and real groups, I found very intriguing.”
“Dig” begins with a 90-minute premiere, Thursday night at 10/9c on USA.
— Jolie Lash
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