This might be the strongest series yet with a fine selection of episodes, again written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. Directors for this series are Graham Harper and Guillem Morales.
Episode 1: The Devil Of Christmas
Opening with a Christmas special and possibly the best Christmas one the series has done but also the most sinister one too. Derek Jacobi has a voice role as director Denis Fulcher being interviewed by an unknown man (Cavan Clerkin). Taking the film within an episode format, we've got Julian (Pemberton), his son Toby (George Bedford), his mother Celia (Rula Lenska) and new wife Kathy (Jessica Raine), the latter also being pregnant. They're staying in an Austrian resort where their guide Klaus (Shearsmith) scares them about the legend of Krampus. It's a legend that's all too true as Toby finds himself being terrorised by Krampus and when it's just Julian and Kathy left at the resort, things took a grisly turn. Now this was of course a film with actors and for the actor playing Kathy, things took a deadlier turn when the true intention of the interview between Fulcher and the unknown interviewer took a very interesting turn. A brilliant but very sinister Christmas episode. 9/10
Episode 2: The Bill
Technically this episode probably could be the real opener of Series 3 and it's somewhat a low-key one. You've got three Northerners - Malcolm (Pemberton), Archie (Shearsmith) and Kevin (Jason Watkins) along with Southerner Craig (Philip Glenister). It's a simple story, really. They're all dining out at a restaurant that's about to close for the night. The waitress Anya (Ellie White) desperately wants to close up but these four men are too busy fighting over which one will pay the bill. While the fighting intensified, the episode revealed a bit more about each of the men before one of them accidentally killed Anya. Then the episode almost had one of the men scammed out of £200,000 before it's revealed to be an elaborate con. Basically if you loved the BBC show, Hustle,the episode is something of a homage to it. 8/10
Episode 3: The Riddle Of The Sphinx
Arguably the most clever episode of the third series would be this one. At first, it felt like a simply take on Pygmalion, but while this show does enjoy a homage, it very much does it's own thing with the idea. Here you've got a young woman named Nina (Alexandra Roach) who snuck into a University of Cambridge room and soon had Professor Nigel Squires (Pemberton) teaching her the intricacies of the crossword puzzle, all the while having a more vengeful motive in her heart. It turned out that Nina wanted to avenge her brother Simon who killed himself after being humiliated by Squires. On top that, her attempts to poison Squires horribly backfired and when fellow professor Jacob Tyler (Shearsmith) entered the room and the connection between himself and Nina really knocked Squires for six. An absolutely brilliant episode with Shearsmith, Pemberton and Roach all knocking it out of the park. 9/10
Episode 4: Empty Orchestra
A works do karaoke session again was another very simple premise but while this was an episode where no one died (the second time this series), it did however have a bunch of people with little time for each other. Every workplace has that nasty person and this episode, it's Connie (Tamzin Outhwaite). Not only was she openly rude to her deaf colleague Janet (Emily Howlett) but she was sleeping with Greg (Shearsmith), the partner of her best friend, Fran (Sarah Hadland) to boot. Elsewhere you got office joker Duane (Javone Prince) and manager Roger (Pemberton), who's just found out his wife wants a divorce. Throughout the episode, secrets got spilled, a romance blossomed while an affair was exposed. Oh and there was various performances of songs such as Don't You Want Me, Saturday Night, Wham Rap! and one of my favourites, Titanium. It's the weakest episode of the series but considering the high bar, there's lots to enjoy still. 8/10
Episode 5: Diddle Diddle Dumpling
The premise of this episode was something that happened to Steve Pemberton in real life involving finding a single man's shoe. In this episode that scenario alone drives stay at home dad David (Shearsmith) to distraction but more importantly, it's his wife Louise (Keeley Hawes) who bore the brunt of David's obsession with the shoe. Louise's attempt to resolve the issue involved using her co-worker Ted (Matthew Baynton) to claim the missing shoe and it nearly worked. Except David really couldn't let it go and the tragic twist of their daughter, Sally (Rosa Strudwick) having a dead twin brother at least gave some context to David's obsession with an implied fatal outcome for poor Ted. Pemberton had a small role in this one as a family friend named Chris. The Four Seasons formatting of the episode worked really well too. 8/10
Episode 6: Private View
On to the finale and again, it's certainly got that horror tinge to it. A random group of people - critic Maurice (Shearsmith), health inspector Kenneth (Pemberton), Irish dinner lady Jean (Fiona Shaw), visually impaired erotic writer, Patricia (Felicity Kendal), former Big Brother 8 contestant, Carrie (Morgana Robinson) and sarcastic waitress Bea (Montserrat Lombard) make for an unlikely pair of people to be grouped together. They're at a private viewing of deceased artist's Elliot Quinn (Johnny Flynn) work and one by one, each of them meet an unpleasant end before it's revealed that Jean wanted all the organs each of the others had taken from her dead son back. Of course the episode had other ideas as Jean's scheme ended up backfiring on her with her final confrontation with Maurice. Oh and there's a brief cameo from Peter Kay as nurse Neil, who didn't have a happy ending. 9/10
All episodes of Inside No. 9 are available on BBC iPlayer and Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment