Review Inside no.9 ( New Series trailer added)

michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
A passionate fan off the show in this vid gives his top five, obviously loves it and I can understand why. Even though I've long since given up on anyone actually reading this thread. Oh well.
 

michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
Series 5
Just finished the latest series, this was a bit of a hit and miss series IMO. Three very good episodes and three ok ones.
1. The Referee's A W***er
A football ref officiating at his last game, with two assistants of dubious ability, runs into trouble as the game , a vital relegation crunch match, descends into chaos and rioting. An unexpected twist as to why this has happened and the ref's motives .
2. Death Be Not Proud
This is an unexpected delight as Shearsmith and Pemberton's dysfunctional mother and son characters from Psychoville , Maureen and David Sowerbutts, reappear in a coda to that series popping up in this series. We left David (Pemberton) with his dead mother (Shearsmith) left in his bath being preserved by ice. What happens next.
Jemma Coleman a.k.a Clara from Dr Who also in this.
3. Love's Great Adventure
This one I struggle to get into. A family with problems at xmas do the best they can. Story told day by day as an advent calendar is opened, to mark the date of each scene, but door number 9 is skipped, what happened on December 9 ? The family's drug dealing son is the main cause for concern.
4. Misdirection
This is class. A brilliant tale of how a magician stole another guy's trick and gets his comeuppance. Years after stealing the trick from a now dead rival, and building his fame and fortune with the trick that involves levitating a chair, the thief is confronted by the dead rival's son.
5. Thinking Out Loud
This is another masterpiece. All the episodes of this series take place in a place numbered 9, hence the title of the show, but here something is wrong, as various characters talk direct to camera about their fears, lives, etc., all in different places, one in an American State Penitentiary. Can't reveal too much about this without spoilers. I learnt though about a severe psychological disorder and it effects one of the characters here. As she says herself....amazeballs.
6. The Stakeout
Two cops on a stakeout in their car in a cemetery at night. The previous partner of the senior cop died in mysterious circumstances in this graveyard. Will it happen again? Horror pastiche of mixed quality.

And here is a more in depth review of series 5.
 
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michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
So series 6 has come and gone, enjoyable on the whole, no real out and out masterpieces but a solid series with surprises.
1. Wuthering Heist
A story done in the style of Commedia Dell'arte, a storytelling style of Italy in the 16th to 18th centuries. An exaggerated comedic style similar I suppose to pantomime, where all the players wear caricature masks. The fourth wall is broken at the start when a character explains to the viewers that as this is the 6th series of inside no.9 the writers should be allowed a bit of self indulgence. A gang are planning a bank heist, which usually has the participants in masks, so a perfect subject drama for commedia Dell'arte. Plenty of laughs as the bungling gang plan the raid. More fourth wall breaking as the gang boss has to go through the plan more than once for those viewing on BBC I player.
 
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michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
2. Simon Says
A dark tale no doubt influenced in its writing by the furore at the end of Game Of Thrones, where fans didn't like the ending.
A fanatical fan of a tv show called the 9th circle, a fantasy epic, records on his mobile phone the show's creator in a scuffle outside a pub, in which a knife is drawn and the victim dies. The fan turns up at the creator's flat and threatens to show his evidence to the police unless he agrees to write another season of the 9th circle, and use the fans plot ideas. An unusual case of blackmail. A double twist at the end when it's revealed the pub scuffle wasn't all it seemed.
3. Lip Service
A man desperate to save his marriage, or at least know if it's saveable, hires a lip reader to check if his wife is having an affair. In a hotel room opposite where the wife is meeting a client as part of her job as an image consultant, the husband and lip reader are set up. The girl lip reader with binoculars and reporting to the husband what is being said. However the husband finds proof the lip reader was keeping tabs on him even before he contacted her company to hire her. Something is going on that he doesn't know about.
 

michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
4. Hurry Up And Wait
20 years previous in a small close knit English community baby Ryan went missing, taken from his pram, never seen again, presumed dead. Now a tv drama is being made recreating those events trying to uncover what could have happened to Ryan. A family living in a mobile home have for a fee allowed their home to be used as a green room, where the actors rest until they're needed for that day's filming. The actor playing a policeman stays for a few hours with the family and begins to suspect the family and their odd daughter may have had something to do with the disappearance. The daughter in her twenties still carries a dolly around with her, and uses hair removal cream on her face....odd.
5. How Do You Plead
A dying man receives palliative care from a team of nurses, one of them a male nurse confides to the patient that he is motivated to care for people because of a school incident many years ago, when he witnessed a boy choking to death on a tangerine and couldn't help. The patient a former top defence barrister confesses that he made his name and fame by a con. He got a murderer off by producing a photo clearing his client, but the photo was a fake and he knew it. But he will soon pay the ultimate price, he made a pact to get the photo and propel him to fame and money, and at midnight he must give up his soul to.....the devil!! A twist when we find out the tangerine incident wasn't exactly as the nurse said it was.
 

michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
6. Last Night Of The Proms
A somewhat disappointing end to series 6, as a family watch the last night of the Proms. Two sisters, their husbands, their alzheimer's affected father and a teenage son all watch the tv broadcast of the classical music proms, and family secrets better left unsaid are revealed. An Arabic looking man, possibly an illegal immigrant enters the house, and strange things happen. Food in the kitchen all eaten gets miraculously replenished, the water the son is drinking makes him drunk, and the stranger has blood in the palms of his hands from wounds. So, water into wine, food miraculously appearing, and a bearded Arabic man with wounded hands.....all points to...it couldn't be could it?

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michaellevenson

Member: Rank 8
As I said above Simon Says is an oblique take on the Game Of Thrones disquiet at its denouement. Here is a good in depth review of the Inside no. 9 episode about a fan of cult series The Ninth Circle blackmailing the writer to do more of his favourite show.
 
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