The second series of Inside No.9 was so good it wasn't long at all until I was back for a proper look at the third one (screened on BBC2 and iPlayer back in December 2016 and February and March of 2017). It didn't, of course, disappoint so I present to you, as I have done with season one and two of the programme, my completely personal, and almost wholly arbitrary, list of each of the six episodes.
From the worst to the best. Not that there is a worst. But Private View was probably the one I was most underwhelmed by. The premise is that Maurice (Reece Shearsmith), Kenneth Williams (Steve Pemberton), partially sighted Patricia (Felicity Kendal) Big Brother contestant Carrie (Morgana Robinson) have all been invited to attend a private view of a new exhibition by the recently deceased artist Elliot Quinn (Johnny Flynn).
Overworked, and underpaid, waitress Bea (Montserrat Lombard) is tasked with providing drinks and reception to the often irascible and ungrateful guests. When the guests aren't being rude to Bea, they're being rude to each other as Private View riffs on the clash between high brow and low brow culture. Referenes to Ron Mueck rub up against ones to Homebase and Carrie's only knowledge of Picasso is that of the Citroen Picasso.
This immersive experience seems to have attracted an audience that is as exclusive as it is disparate. None of them, bar perhaps art critic Maurice, seem to know why they've been invited - and when some of them die it becomes ever more confusing as to what's happening. With references to clown's pockets and guest appearances by Fiona Shaw, Muriel Gray (commentating on the Turner Prize), and Peter Kay (whose cameo is very brief and, to some, probably very satisfying), Private View has all the hallmarks of a classic Inside No.9 and is a very enjoyable watch.
It's just that there are five better episodes in this series. Empty Orchestra's an enjoyable watch and not just for the music. We hear the likes of Come On Eileen, Don't You Want Me, Whigfield's Saturday Night, Wham Rap, Yazoo's Only You, Rainbow's Since You've Been Gone, I Know Him So Well, and, er, David Guetta and Sia's Titanium as a group of work colleagues meet in fancy dress to celebrate their boss Roger's (Pemberton) promotion.
They're all, except Roger himself, in fancy dress. Greg (Shearsmith) is either a sumo wrestler or one of the characters from New Order's True Faith video, his partner Fran (Sarah Hadland) has come as Britney Spears, bitchy Connie (Tamzin Outhwaite) has gone for the classic Amy Winehouse look, and deaf Janet (Emily Howett) is dolled up as Boy George.
Janet has the hots for Duane (Javone Prince) who turns up dressed as Michael Jackson and is soon operating a 'drugs bingo' which includes, alongside ecstasty, ketamine, and laxative, an orange Tic-Tac. Their karaoke evening, of course, does not go to plan and soon all the petty office politics, jealousies, prejudices, and crushes come out while Roger either sits in the corner working out who to sack or ties a tie round his head to sing a soft rock classic.
Janet's deafness is sympathetically handled and a crucial part of the plot and while Empty Orchestra (the literal meaning of kara-oke) is a fun and enjoyable watch it's not as macabre as you may expect from Shearsmith and Pemberton.
Which is not something you could level at The Riddle Of The Sphinx. Professor Nigel Squires (Pemberton) writes cryptic crosswords, under the alias of Sphinx, for Cambridge student magazine Varsity and Nina (Alexandra Roach) has broken into his office to ask for help solving them. Ostensibly she wants to impress her boyfriend Simon, an enthusiastic fan of the cryptics.
As with Private View, The Riddle Of The Sphinx, riffs on highbrow/lowbrow culture clashes. There's references to Pygmalion, Pictionary, Grindr, Hi-De-Hi, Chekhov, Sophocles, and the belief that all unusual meat seems to taste of chicken. When it is revealed that Nina works at Greggs she claims it's because she's "emotionally intelligent".
But that's what all the thickos say! The Riddle Of The Sphinx is an enjoyable enough clash of wits between Squires and Nina as it is but when Squires' colleague Tyler (Shearsmith) arrives things get very bizarre and the twists and turns were not ones that I saw coming though they were both imaginative and ghoulish. Extra points too for a none too subtle, and quite rare for these writers, political (and pro-NHS) point that's effortlessly squeezed in at the denouement.
The Bill is a simple but effective story in which three northerners, Malcolm (Pemberton seems to be inspired by Shearsmith's Geoff Tipps from The League Of Gentlemen), Archie (Shearsmith), and Kevin (Jason Watkins) are entertaining wealthy Londoner Craig (Philip Glenister). The evening is going well, old stories are being told, rude jokes are being made, until the long suffering and unnamed waitress (Ellie White) asks for the bill.
Soon the four of them are fighting tooth and nail about who should pay the bill and their arguments and what seems to be their desire to show off their largesse spin out into personal insults, historical enmities, and so on and so on. Inevitably it all goes way too far but, of course, in the world of Inside No.9 nothing is quite as it seems.
When I wrote my first blog about Inside No.9 my friend Rob wrote to me to tell me how much he'd enjoyed watching the series with his young daughter. When I watched The Devil Of Christmas I hoped he hadn't watch that one with her. Screened as a Xmas special before the rest of the season it is, quite easily, the darkest episode of the entire series - and, for me, the second best.
It's December 1977 and an English family (Pemberton, his new wife Jessica Raine, his son George Bedford, and his mother Rula Lenska) have arrived in a chalet in the Austrian alps for a skiing holiday. Their guide Klaus (Shearsmith) frightens them with the story of Krampus and soon, in the chalet, strange things start to happen.
References to Worzel Gummidge and Berkhamsted root the whole thing in a kind of prosaic Englishness of the era but Klaus's enormous wonky pipe and deliciously hammy limp (Shearsmith really makes the most of this one) draw our attention to the fact that something, quite clearly, is not as it should be.
The Devil Of Christmas, with its intentionally bad acting - some of Pemberton's diction is reminiscent of Steven Toast - and 70s outfits, seems like an episode of The Hammer House Of Horror but it its, remarkably, perhaps even more grisly than one of them. When Krampus appears, or seems to appear, havoc is wreaked not just in the house but within the family and even behind the camera where a constant audio commentary by narrator Dennis Fulcher (Derek Jacobi, quite a scoop) takes us to places we really shouldn't go.
It was pipped to the series three title by the daft sounding Diddle Diddle Dumpling. Diddle Diddle Dumpling also has a pretty silly premise. When out jogging, David (Shearsmith) finds a solitary man's black leather slip-on shoe. He soon becomes obsessed with finding out who owns the shoe and can, it seems, not even go a minute without talking about it.
This, understandably, creates problems with his wife Louise (Keeley Hawes) and soon their nice house, with its lovely big garden, doesn't seem such a pleasant place to be. Vivaldi soundtrack notwithstanding. As ever, with Inside No.9, the references are completely en pointe (from Tolstoy to Angelina Ballerina to Planet Organic) and serve to place these extraordinary stories in recognisable worlds.
All the more powerful for when the twist, or reveal, arrives and in Diddle Diddle Dumpling that twist/reveal is both a powerful and an ultimately tragic one. You'll feel a chill up your back. From a story that began with such a ludicrous premise, that's an impressive piece of writing. But so is each and every episode of Inside No.9. More soon.
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