A very cynical episode and therefore I wasn't sure if they could make a plot twist land.
And then we get the surprisingly poignant and wholesome ending.
But if series 1 isn't even the best one, then how good is it going to be??
A very cynical episode and therefore I wasn't sure if they could make a plot twist land.
And then we get the surprisingly poignant and wholesome ending. View attachment 53568
But if series 1 isn't even the best one, then how good is it going to be??
IMHO Series 1 is the weakest, and Last Gasp the weakest of series 1, so signs are good for your enjoyment of the show.
BTW series 3 and 7 are sensational for me.
I would describe it as an episode that looks a bit familiar, but it's still a good one.
The supporting cast is a joy to watch, and I hoped that the Macbeth episode was going to be a dinner with neighbours Bill & Jean.
Episode 1.6 The Harrowing is my least favourite because it looks like Disney's Haunted Mansion or Johnny Depp's Dark Shadows, and there's no shift in tone.
If I'm going to buy the complete box set I'll have to wait until the end of July before I can watch the next episode. That's going to be a challenge!
That pre-release has now five 1-star ratings, all by the same troll who's pissed that it isn't a bluray. I hope he stays angry for the rest of his life.
A family of four visit an escape room for a bit of adventure and family bonding.
The guide tells them this room is the cellar of a house belonging to Dr Death, the fictional psycho the family need to outwit to escape. As usual in escape rooms clues are to be found within, and to add to the drama the guide informs them that Dr Death might return. The father Jason gets chained to the bed and first up the two daughters and wife Lynne have to look for clues to get him released.
A filing cabinet is revealed to be a secret entrance to a passageway the girls and wife crawl through to get to a room where a key is found but is padlocked. Without going over every clue suffice to say the key is recovered. Now a possible twist in the tale could be Dr Death is real and the escape room is actually a trap. So when the girls start screaming and a masked figure enters carrying a large hammer it certainly seems this is indeed the twist. But the real twist is revealed when we discover....
That Jason is really in a hospital bed in a coma, family at bedside as a doctor enters to turn off the life support machine as it is certain that brain activity is absent from Jason , on a ventilator. Back in the mindscape that is the escape room Jason fights for his life as Dr Death menacingly comes towards him. Can he escape in time, and awake from his coma?
Set in Edwardian times, piano tuner Jonah Quigley arrives at a large mansion for a job.
He discovers the piano he is to tune belonged to now deceased composer Nathaniel Burnham, a hero of his, someone whose music Quigley much admires. In the house is the widow Lillian, lawyer friend Dickie and maid Devonshire.
Lillian reveals why her husband died, it was because of a curse. The completion of the 9th symphony is supposed to be unlucky in the extreme and brings about death. Beethoven and Mahler both died after completing their 9th symphonies, and Lillian recalls how her husband, afraid to complete his 9th , went insane and shot himself.
While tuning the piano Quigley discovers a hidden sheet of music in the piano, part of Burnham's unfinished 9th. Lillian reveals her husband requested if he died before finishing his 9th that the unfinished work be buried with him, and this was carried out.
However scheming maid Devonshire persuades Quigley to dig up the grave and retrieve the manuscript. Quigley does this, desperate for the unfinished work, and meets Devonshire at the grave. An argument ensues regarding how to monetize their find, and Quigley kills her and throws her in the grave.
But Lillian and Dickie the family lawyer foresaw this and are prepared to blackmail Quigley, unless he himself completes the work, and risks the Curse Of The Ninth.
S9 E6 THE FINAL EVER EPISODE
" PLODDING ON"
Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton went to great lengths to keep this finale a secret until it was transmitted, and in that spirit I'll not reveal the plot to this last episode of Inside No. 9
The set-up kinda feels like an obvious choice and the jokes aren't terribly surprising, but the characters are very vibrant and somewhat relatable and that makes it a very watchable episode. A super-funny thing happens on the security cam (or whatever it was) but it's easy to overlook it because nothing interesting happens on that camera for most of the episode's running time.
I guess a parody on dysfunctional family drama needs to be all over the place, but short stories like these need some kind of focus to make it "pop".
Ironically, the episode felt much longer than it was.
Like Last Gasp from series one this is also a very bitchy and cynical episode and I find it a little exhausting in some parts. But the main problem I have with this story is that it's totally unbelievable. As far as I know, the Prank TV shows had died out after the 1980s therefore it seems like a waste of time and money to produce Scaredy Cam in the 2010s.
The three P's (pee, poo and porn) are well-presented in most episodes. Roll on series 3.
Great stereotyping but also nightmarishly uncomfortable as it feels like being trapped with all these difficult and loud and stinky people.
They tricked me with the information about the dead ex-boyfriend. It looks like a tasteful and wholesome remake of the famous Twilight Zone episode.
Stupid and nasty and screamingly funny.
The set-up kinda feels like an obvious choice and the jokes aren't terribly surprising, but the characters are very vibrant and somewhat relatable and that makes it a very watchable episode. A super-funny thing happens on the security cam (or whatever it was) but it's easy to overlook it because nothing interesting happens on that camera for most of the episode's running time.
I guess a parody on dysfunctional family drama needs to be all over the place, but short stories like these need some kind of focus to make it "pop".
Ironically, the episode felt much longer than it was.
Like Last Gasp from series one this is also a very bitchy and cynical episode and I find it a little exhausting in some parts. But the main problem I have with this story is that it's totally unbelievable. As far as I know, the Prank TV shows had died out after the 1980s therefore it seems like a waste of time and money to produce Scaredy Cam in the 2010s.
The three P's (pee, poo and porn) are well-presented in most episodes. Roll on series 3.
I was hoping you'd let us all know how you were getting on with this series. Thanks, did you guess any of the twists ? That is what most fans try to do to see how clever they are. I don't think I've mentioned this, but in a series 4 episode there is a bronze statuette of a hare, as a central plot point. So what , you may think, but Shearsmith and Pemberton, for a laugh probably, put somewhere in EVERY episode, a bronze hare ! It's a fans game to spot the hare if you can. Not recommended for first viewing, but on rewatches. There is a YouTube video where every hare is revealed.
As is the case with most plot-twist anthology series, the more you watch the more you'll get the hang of it.
I figured that the dead man in La Couchette wasn't "just a dead man", I expected the son of Picasso-cat lady in Cold Comfort to show up at some point, and the comeuppance of the unpleasant host of Scaredy Cam in Séance Time was signalled from the very beginning (or at least from the part when it turned out to be a TV programme and the controversial history of "boy and the gorilla").
I'm not trying to guess anything, and when the episodes are entertaining then the twist doesn't seem very important to me. It's more like ending the stories in a satisfying way.
What I love about this episode is that the revenge story is as convoluted as the riddles. Now, I don't know much about solving riddles (it usually makes me feel very frustrated) let alone how to do it in English language, but I'm not quite sure if the explanations as given by the professor is based on reality. The way I see it, it takes an awful lot of imagination to solve his crossword puzzles.
And sometimes I thought, is that really one word? Perhaps it was meant to be ridiculous, perhaps it wasn't. If I knew I may have liked the episode even better.
The only thing that could have saved this story is if all or most characters were brutally murdered. As a punishment for being in a karaoke episode.
Even the songs used in a narrative way (Don't You Want Me Baby / I Know Him So Well) doesn't look very interesting, mostly because none of the characters are any fun.
On the upside, it made me re-discover Wham Rap.
The twist was surprising, I thought the shoe was a metaphor for his life as discarded houseman. I liked the insanity of the obsession, the website, the interrogation when somebody claims the shoe.
When he told his wife that they (the twins) "belong together" I thought he had killed his daughter.
A terrific whodunit with fun characters, but I didn't understand the ending. He was/wasn't killed or was he possessed by the spirit of the dead artist? I have no idea.
Series 3 is terrific, IMO second only to series 7. All good except Empty Orchestra which like you I didn't particularly like. The ending of Private View is a puzzle, I'm assuming somehow he escaped the clutches of the artist's murdering mother and took her heart to complete the artwork.
Just an early heads up, the 2nd episode of series 5, Death Be Not Proud, is unofficially a 15th episode of Psychoville, the series Shearsmith and Pemberton did before no. 9. Psychoville was a comedy horror-thriller that did have a definitive ending, however two of the characters had an open ended situation and Shearsmith and Pemberton brought them back for a one off no. 9 episode. It can be watched without previously watching Psychoville but it is obviously better to skip this episode if you have any intention of watching the prior series. I've started a thread on it.
Btw ,first episode of series 4, Zanzibar, the whole script is written in iambic pentameter.
I hadn't really thought about watching Psychoville, maybe I will some day. That particular Inside no. 9 episode could be an interesting teaser....
But, Dark Shadows, Doctor Who and Dallas first (what a line-up!)
Just remembered; I don't know how it's packaged in the dvd whole series boxset , but the " live " episode Deadline was originally transmitted between series 4 and 5. The episode was shown at 10pm on BBC2 at Halloween, and without spoilers, the idea was viewers shocked at what was happening, reacted on social media and the characters in the story reacted back!! Meaning it could only be seen live once, I unfortunately didn't see it live , so like anyone watching it on demand, dvd etc...not quite the same.
This is fascinating even though backwards storytelling goes against my nature. Somehow I always lose track of the previous future events.
But maybe it's like May (very entertainingly performed by Monica Dolan) says "I can explain". But she can't, and to show it backwards is as incomprehensible as her account of that day. (people would mention things like "oh, and before that", "I think I forgot to mention that....").
Nevertheless, it's a wickedly funny story.
Passive-aggressive awkwardness with the occasional heated accusation, and the newlyweds as the story's red herring.
There is, of course, the twist, and then an additional twist that takes a little bit of the darkness out of it (even if the comeuppance is very much about darkness).
"Very dangerous! Do not open this package!"
It's sort of like "never press this button under any circumstances". If it's not meant to be used then why make it available in the first place.
I think, overall, series 4 was stronger than series 3.
Willie Oleson -Next up is Deadline, the live Halloween special. It was a genius idea, excellently realised, as the events in the episode created instant reaction on social media, reacted in return by Shearsmith and Pemberton in the episode. Problem is of course that it only worked watched live. I didn't because I didn't know it was on.
Series 5 was a real mixed bag. IMO 4th and 5th episodes are best, 1st, 3rd and 6th very so-so. The 2nd episode is great, as a coda to Psychoville, not really an inside no.9 ep, but then again it's not meant to be.
The 3rd episode Love's Great Adventure is one critics rave about as brilliant, can't see it myself, interested to see how you get on with that one.
Very, very confusing until it becomes clear what it's all about. Unfortunately we'll never know the story within the story which hinted at a murder mystery.
Or perhaps it is connected with the live events since the ghosts also used the mobile phone prop in the dramatised scene. But whatever what was meant to be and what wasn't, it is fascinating from start to finish.
Confusing for all the wrong reasons. Undecipherable sports rules jargon, characters that don't connect in a familiar way (well, I got the gay affair) and overall I just didn't care about anything that was happening. Is it a football game? Is there a team or just three players? What's the role of Reece Shearsmith in this ensemble, what's his function in the team?
Let's forget about it as quickly as possible and continue with episode 3 (per DVD count).
Very, very confusing until it becomes clear what it's all about. Unfortunately we'll never know the story within the story which hinted at a murder mystery.
Or perhaps it is connected with the live events since the ghosts also used the mobile phone prop in the dramatised scene. But whatever what was meant to be and what wasn't, it is fascinating from start to finish.
Unlike....
Confusing for all the wrong reasons. Undecipherable sports rules jargon, characters that don't connect in a familiar way (well, I got the gay affair) and overall I just didn't care about anything that was happening. Is it a football game? Is there a team or just three players? What's the role of Reece Shearsmith in this ensemble, what's his function in the team?
Let's forget about it as quickly as possible and continue with episode 3 (per DVD count).
To ease your confusion about S5 E1
Shearsmith was part of the four man officiating team, one ref, two linesmen and Reece as the touchline 4th official.
Pemberton's character accepting money for " spot betting " , ie influencing a minor incident in the game( that we never saw- happens off screen). The ref supposedly with integrity balancing things up in second half by giving a goal to other team causing chaos , crowd disturbance and match abandonment . This meant deduction of points for home team because they're responsible for crowd violence. Incidentally, or so we thought, the deducted points meant a third team not playing in this match, gaining promotion to Premier League. Not Incidentally at all as the ref's tattoo revealed his loyalty to this other team , and thus he contrived the chaos to get his team promoted. The possibility exists that the mystery figure that approached Pemberton's character and suggested the bet was in fact working for the ref!! He knew Pemberton's weakness and that he would accept the bet. The ref possibly caused it all.
I must have missed the information about the other team (as shown in the tattoo) but like I said it's probably because of the "technical" sports talk I'm not familiar with. It felt like a very long episode.
p.s. @Hawkman, have you already done a thread for the BBC production of The Day Of The Triffids? I watched that a few weeks ago and it was as creepy as I remembered from my childhood.
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