Update from the computer
Very smart and good-looking British men continue making their horror-comedy show
I was in New York for sad, family-related reasons I’m not going to write about at least not in this post. While there, I became convinced that Britbox US had a whole season of Inside No 9 that the Canadian Britbox did not, and watched it at strange hours on my phone, only to learn it’s just newly on Britbox and in Canada as well.
What follows is my best-to-not-best-but-still-good rankings of these new episodes. I know it doesn’t seem like something I’d like but it also kind of does, I don’t know. If you have yet to see any of these, and were thinking of it, spoilers disclaimer of course applies.
“The Last Weekend”
It doesn’t seem fair for me to offer a neutral interpretation of an episode that seemed like a strange dream I might have had (such that it’s good I took some screenshots or I’d have thought I imagined it), while also extremely like a brilliant TV episode I could not have in a million years come up with.
The reason I clicked on this episode first, out of order, is precisely because of Benidorm. It guest-stars Sheila Reid, aka Madge, the best Benidorm character. Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith play lovers (full circle with the first ep I’m now remembering), the Pemberton character with my husband’s first name, and having a fling (or so you think) with a man (or so you think) named Mick, which is of course Pemberton’s character’s name on Benidorm. Oh and the plot turns out to revolve around very-online forum drama. It’s like I was focus-grouped for it. Even more so when you consider the intertextuality:
It’s the best by far on the twist front. I will not full-on spoiler that twist, but oh, it is a good one. I did not see it coming. It doesn’t make a drop of sense but makes perfect internal sense so it’s fine. It’s not meant to be a documentary. For that you want Midsomer Murders.
“Mother’s Ruin”
Super gory but too absurd to be upsetting (unless you’re squeamish about such things). Cockney rhyming slang, sibling rivalries, ancient infidelities, and a well-utilized talking parrot (?). Best use of a speaking bird since that one Frasier.
“3x3”
Game show spoof that’s really more of a satire of a certain BBC look-how-clever brand of humor. How do I even get this one, being a Canadian-American who has spent a total of a week of her life in the UK and all of it in London? The magic of television and radio. I know exactly what this is about. And the writing is so spectacular that this gets top marks despite not having either Shearsmith or Pemberton in it.
4. “Love is a Stranger”
A very funny online-dating episode whose only flaw was that the twist was obvious too early. There’s talk of a lonely hearts killer, and you see this lonely sad-sack lady and you think, if you’re me, the twist is that she’s the killer, isn’t it? and sure enough, it is. Her motivation for killing is still a bit surprising.
“Paraskevidekatriaphobia”
One of those rich-British-people-who-live-in-a-big-sterile-suburban-house episodes. Possibly too bleak of a backstory for a historical moment the show’s creators couldn’t have known in May when this episode first aired, but also, despite being more realist than many of the other twists, less plausible. (Dead kids being mentioned is too much for me, but not—see, “Mother’s Ruin”—the very obviously fictitious severing of a living adult character’s foot.) A really excellent peacock costume on Moyo Akandé, however. Ayda Kiiza also plays a very realistic 5ish-year-old, leading to a plot moment reminiscent of that Kim’s Convenience where they’re locked out on a balcony. A surprising twist but somehow predictable—if admirably dark—ending.