There’s high points in Series 4 of Inside No. 9 – Nicola Walker, Monica Dolan, Zoë Wanamaker – but also the first signs of unevenness in the writing
“You might want to warn him about the whole Andrew Lloyd Webber thing”
Whilst still very much following the established template, insofar as there is such a thing for as varied a show as Inside No. 9, Series 4 does feel like Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith were stretching their wings just a little bit in dialling down the horror elements in order to embrace yet more genre fluidity. There’s always been that variety, a hallmark of the programme for sure but across these six stories, it does feel like a marked shift.
Nothing really hits that out-and-out Gothic horror note, the darker plotting of the closing episode Tempting Fate is of a disinctly contemporary bent amd though there is a scary basement cell elsewhere to give a chill or three, that’s about it. Instead there’s c0d-Shakespearean farce in iambic pentameter, maudlin vaudeville routines and precious artistic types debating an award shortlist. The one story with multiple murders is told in reverse which makes it highly entertaining.
That’s Once Removed, a tricksy tale of moving house using reverse chronology (10 minutes earlier…etc) with Monica Dolan being lots of fun as per. And speaking of actresses I adore, Nicola Walker is at the heart of To Have and To Hold, a cautionary tale about trusting anyone who likes Pot Noodles and her work here is particularly satisfying. Not only that, there’s Zoë Wanamaker and Fenella Woolgar in And the Winner Is…, which makes it watchable if not entirely compelling in the final analysis of the writing.
There’s the customary cleverness in the Shakespearean-inspired Zanzibar but something felt off about the whole thing for me, its arch staginess in its hotel corridor leaving me cold despite its considerable talents (Rory Kinnear, Bill Paterson, Marcia Warren, Hattie Morahan, Tanya Franks, Kevin Eldon and more) and though Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room won Pemberton a BAFTA, it didn’t tickle my fancy, making this the first properly uneven series of Inside No.9, at least for me.
