INSIDE MAN. BBC1 9pm. Mon 26 and tue 27 sept TV PACE NO SPOILERS

[Blondeshavemorefun]

new drama starting David tennant

4 parts

1&2 on mon and tue 26/27 sept

3&4 following week mon and tue on 3/4 October

as usual bloody iPlayer will have them all 🙄 so rem this is tv paced 😛😁

On the face of it, it looks like an unlikely story following a prisoner on death row in the United States, a vicar in a quiet English town, and a maths teacher trapped in a cellar.

What’s their connection, you may ask?

According to the synopsis, the story follows a US prisoner on death row (Tucci), who is seeking atonement as he faces execution. It continues: “On a train in England, a journalist (West) is looking for a story. In a quiet little village, a vicar (Tennant) is picking up his son’s maths tutor (Dolly Wells) from the station.

“All four are about to be entangled in a dilemma that could lead one of them to murder.”

And as the synopsis also states: “Everyone’s a murderer – you just need a good reason and a bad day.”

Like we said, this series has a star-studded cast. Tennant plays Harry Watling, Tucci plays Jefferson Grieff, West plays Beth Davenport while Dolly Wells (Pursuit Of Love) plays Janice Fife.

The cast also includes Lyndsey Marshal (Dracula), Atkins Estimond (Hightown), Mark Quarterly (Cursed), Tilly Vosburgh (Maigret), Louis Oliver (Midnight Mass), Kate Dickie (The Witch) and Dylan Baker (Hunters).

Wait, basement woman is Janice, not Beth. It's her who is atoning.

Oh God, if murder is linked to love ("you don't kill anyone you're indifferent about"), she had better not love Vicar, or hope he loves her. And she is wanting him to want to kill her, or some shite. But instead he'll prove his love for his wife, by... killing her instead?

At least the vicar had come up with a solution that would mean no one getting killed. But his wife won't want to be married to a paedophile, she would prefer to be a murderer.

i have only seen episode 1
was annoyed that david tennant, and his wife! should have locked teacher in the cellar however the teacher was going to go to the police to say it was their son Ben's flashdrive.
she was convinced it was ben's and wasnt hearing any different

His associate was looking at Janine's Facebook profile. I'm guessing she'd made some sort of reference to a weekly call on there or somewhere else online that he'd found.

So all of the characters are behaving in very weird ways.
The weirdest being the young journalist who trusts a murderer on death row enough to follow his every instruction, including driving to an out of town garage to meet a strange men.
Mind you there’s then the teacher who handcuffs herself to a pipe and suggests helping her kidnappers so no one worries about her.
Then theres the Vicar who wants to confess he’s a pedophile even though he isn’t (or is he?!)

It’s batshit crazy but I will keep watching!

Yep @LizzieSiddal bout right. Batshit crazy but enjoying it

Ahh thank you! I missed that bit.

I tho k vicariously taking blame is because he is is trying to protect his son. So it looks like he was going to let the maths teacher go and if she went to the police the evidence is there on his laptop.

Januce I dont understand. I like her though. Is she the same actress that played the step mum / PE teacher in Some Girls?

Just started. Gutted he hasn't got his proper accent!!!

Maybe easier to sell to other countries without a Scottish accent? I've heard that in the States they sometimes add subtitles to British shows with accents as they can't understand them.

He does a very impressive English accent though.

The truth would be far better for his son though - having a vicar dad in jail for that offence would be a nightmare, and would he believe his dad was actually guilty? Would really mess with him.

Could the puritanical mother be the paedophile, and that’s why Edgar’s note didn’t say ‘He's protecting me’?

Is Janice trying to get the vicar and his wife to try to kill each other? It’s so completely mental, anything’s possible.

This is why I'm treating it like a Dr who episode

I don’t get the reference to a twist. I’m not trying to be pedantic (really!) but a twist is the vicar turning out to be the real paedophile who has groomed Edgar to get stuff for him or Janice turning out to be Stanley Tucci’s ‘dead’ wife and it was someone else he killed and then mutilated. Those are twists.

A character flagged from their very first appearance as likely to do something, then actually doing it, isn’t a twist. It was always baked in that it was quite likely Edgar would do what he did, just as it was that our clever, clever death row detective wasn’t being honest with the naive journalist.

For just a moment when Beth went to the garage I thought that the two stories were going to link up in a really fascinating way.

I was imagining something like Tucci is a much darker psychopath than we assumed. He’s like Manson and unbeknownst to everyone has enlisted disciples around the world who write to him adoringly. Janice is one of these disciples, despite her apparent common sense, and he has instructed her to take any opportunity that presents itself to make someone she meets - preferably the nicest people she knows - into murderers, even if that means sacrificing herself. Intriguing, right?

But no. He’s just taking the case when he said he wasn’t going to and apparently Janice’s Facebook status is ‘I love talking to my sister in Australia at 9pm every Saturday evening on Skype. Lol. #zoomisforlosers’

Btw I don’t think they will throw the note away. I think it will be found, Edgar’s mum will tell the vicar what it says and the vicar will realise that it could be taken to mean that he is covering up for his son, which means his whole plan unravels and they have to kill Janice before the police find out anything.

I also think that Janice’s weird behaviour is her trying to make vicar and vicar’s wife suspicious of each other so they turn on each other. Possibly her only way out.

Having a vicar in the family I have to laugh at the idea of a church doing up a vicarage nicely.
Massive vicarages are super rare and the standard is definitely far more like Rev than this. Wealthy churches are also like hens teeth. They should be living in a 80s 3 bed+box room, half double-glazed, with very noisy plumbing, a bathroom that hasn’t been redone in 30 years and magnolia everywhere. Nothing wrong with that of course but that’s what it’s really like.

I think I said twist. In reference to the note left by Edgar.

What is Janice playing at? I don’t understand her behaviour at all. Then again I do t understand the vicars behaviour either, or his wife’s.

@Rummikub - what do you think will happen with the note? I guess I’m just saying I wasn’t surprised the suicidal character died by suicide.

Ludicrous theory alert!
Full of holes, but:

Could it be that "Inside Man" is a deliberate red herring, and that "Inside Woman" is actually the case?

That Janice is the powerful 'insider'.

Using psychological mind games to expose and bring about the downfall of those responsible for (and willing viewers of) child sex abuse. Perhaps damaged herself, when young?

Somehow in collusion with Grieff, for the moral good.
(Though I've yet to figure out how they know each other...)

Engineered the train incident as a planned introduction to Beth (already on her radar), whose gratitude and journalistic skills she'll now utilise in her cause.

Maths tutor role a cover to gain access to vicar's family/ gather evidence of paedophile ring. Somehow connected to American end. Maybe bigshot real estate guy involved?

Regards vicar as turning a blind eye and abusing his position of trust.
Yet an ostensibly 'immoral' prisoner showing more ethical principles.

Pre-handcuffing, Janice had access to all those saws/power tools. Could easily have escaped. Why didn't she, if not to stay put and further implode vicar's relationship/life?
Though I have an odd feeling about Mrs Vicar, too. Hmm.

Yes I agree about the suicide being an obvious outcome.

Which option provides more? Note destroyed or passed to police? I think latter.

@ThaliaLuxurySpa - I’m really hoping it’s something like this. Something actually clever. As opposed to just a play on Tucci’s character being ‘inside’ and the question about what’s ‘inside’ all of us (I.e. what we’re capable of doing).

I don’t see how Janice could have engineered any of it really though. At least until she got into the cellar. She didn’t say ‘anyone got a memory stick?’ or anything obvious. She couldn’t have known what Ben was going to say.

One episode in.

So much to criticise.

But it really really jars that they are making a fun likeable character of a serial killer of women.
Seriously, in this day and age?

I thought in the first episode, Janice said she didn't have Facebook 🤔

Janice doesnt have Facebook
Does anyone know what is going on?
...

Did she say she didn't have the app on her phone? Not that she wasn't on it