Inside man
Stuck
What a pleasure to have an old friend for dinner. Inside Man (BBC1) takes our old friend Hannibal Lecter and serves the psycho with a side dish of Sherlock.
Starring Stanley Tucci as an amateur detective on Death Row in an American prison, this sparkling dark comedy describes his intentions with macabre flavor. “Everyone is a murderer,” claims Tucci, as wife killer Jefferson Grieff. “You just have to meet the right person.”
For Harry, a cool and trendy vicar played by David Tennant, the “right person” is his teenage son’s math teacher, Janice (Dolly Wells).
Harry is everyone’s friend, loved by the ladies who do the church flowers, and a devoted father. If he has a fault, it’s that he’s just too nice. He is a combination of Cliff Richard and Fleabag’s ‘hot priest’, Andrew Scott. He can’t be a murderer, can he?
Inside Man’s creator Steven Moffat takes a sadistic joy in proving how quickly the Reverend can become a ruthless killer.
Christopher Stevens: Inside Man, which continues tonight, is complicated, inventive and morbidly witty
All it takes is a flash drive full of child porn (confiscated unknowingly by a man at church) and a misunderstanding with Janice’s laptop.
She thinks the perverted videos belong to Harry’s son, Ben (Louis Oliver, Moffat’s own son in real life). In a desperate attempt to prevent Janice from going to the police, Harry pushes her down the basement stairs. Murder is that simple.
But it isn’t, because Janice isn’t dead, and she’s an extremely resourceful woman.
We met her in a set scene that initially seemed to make little sense. A lurking sex plague on a commuter train harassed young women until Janice pulled out her smartphone and began filming it. Soon all the female passengers did the same and the troublemaker snuck off.
What at first looked like a banal and condescending fantasy about how women could defend themselves from sexual assault just standing together had a subtler purpose.
Thanks to a journalist in the carriage, Janice is now connected to the aptly named Mr. Grieff, on the other side of the Atlantic. And while she desperately tries to escape from the pastor’s basement, his intervention could save her life.
Inside Man, which continues tonight, is intricate, inventive and morbidly witty. It’s a suburban black comedy, the kind of story that may have been made up by Roald Dahl, but it’s also a tribute to Hollywood — not just The Silence Of The Lambs, but prison dramas like Stephen King’s The Green Mile. You’ve never seen anything like it.
The characters in writer and comic book actor Dylan Moran’s sitcom Stuck (BBC2) are familiar, but that’s what it’s all about. With his tousled hair and tattered black T-shirts, Moran plays Dan, an aging advertising executive whose retirement plan involves handing over his redundancy pay to a partner with a gambling problem.
Christopher Stevens: With the characters still being sketched out, some of the jokes miss the mark. But it’s definitely worth a try, if only for the brilliant opening scene
The show’s five episodes – all available on iPlayer – explore the world of a middle-aged couple whose love life lies in a dead end. Morgana Robinson has the best lines, as Dan’s girlfriend Carla – desperate for a child, but instead forced to mother her overgrown baby from a boss.
Carla works for a woo-woo lifestyle brand called Loop. That’s Loop with an L. Absolutely no Goop with a G-for-Gwyneth.
While the characters are still being outlined, some of the jokes miss the mark. But it’s definitely worth a try, if only for the brilliant opening scene.
Through an overhead camera, we watch Dan and Carla spend a sleepless night – writhing, stretched out, reading their phones, even getting up for a bowl of cereal. No wonder they both look squeezed.