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Inside Man (Season 1): Netflix, alongside Hartswood Films, brings a Steven Moffat thriller drama titled ‘Inside Man 2022’ to their platform, marking a very interesting release calender for Moffat.
Steven Moffat teams with Director Paul McGuigan to deliver an intriguing drama across two ends of the Pacific Ocean. While one half of the story occurs in England with David Tennant as ‘The Dark Vicar,’ the other half is in an American state prison where we see stalwart Stanley Tucci don the character of a professor of Criminology.
He awaits his execution date while hearing and solving cases for the average person—only those of moral worth. With a stellar star cast and witty plot twists with sharp turns in character arcs, the series delivers a narrative that keeps you hooked and leaves you just a little unhinged every time you learn something new.
With each episode spanning an hour, the series is an elongated narrative of how a misunderstanding turns one man desperate to save his innocent son until his ‘innocent’ son does the impossible with no turning back.
The series turns violent and ghastly, with shocking revelations and twists that mark an English sitcom falling short in some places. With no further delay, let us understand Tucci’s and Tennant’s journey to ultimate salvation through this dangerously tense drama.
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Inside Man 2022 (Season 1) Review & Analysis
A Meaty Suspense Thriller Basking in the Subjective Glory of the Holy Spirit
Creator and Writer Steven Moffat delivers a dance of metaphors, glaring closely at the fine line between what is sinister and what is innocent. His form of storytelling is masterful but treads dangerously, pleasing viewers and annoying some.
Foresight within the screenplay is prominent, and he achieves this perfectly. Somehow, when we expect a constant high, we are sourly mistaken for an unexpected low showing an inverse relationship between the vision of the director and the writer. It makes for a bitter viewing and complete awareness of stalling for time.
With Moffat’s creation airing on Amazon Prime Video titled ‘The Devil’s Hour 2022’ outdoing this drama by leagues, it almost appears his resources were limited. Composer David Arnold’s choice of John Grant’s version of ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’ is the perfect track to introduce Stanley Tucci’s character Jefferson Greiff, a former Law lecturer on death row for killing and beheading his wife. David Tennant as Reverend Harry Watling is a refreshing alter ego performance to his character from Criminal UK.
Stanley Tucci is picky about his selection of roles, and we are very grateful. Here he is the gentleman’s pickpocket of sleuthing and deduction. Having a borderline Holmes complex, he always has a small trick up his sleeve with his long reach of resources (even outside prison). He sits alongside his ‘Moriarty’ in Atkins Estmond as Dillon Kempton, his fellow inmate, with a photographic memory recording all the cases that are put forward to the two. With David Tennant at the helm on the other end, we know that the drama will have better substance than most.
Inside Man 2022 (Season 1) Recap
A Vicar of Questionable Conscience and A Man on Deathrow Seeking Atonement
The series begins with an unlikely femme fatale-like figure, Janice Fife, a math teacher who rescues Beth Davenport, a journalist’s dignity from the utterly toxic physical move a man makes on Beth in the English Metro train. With her rescue, Beth becomes fast friends with a hesitant Janice. When Reverend Harry Watling picks up Janice, she is about to tutor his son, Ben. To begin her session, she requires a flash drive to transfer some modules for Ben to view and begin class. On entering the house, Janice finds a flash drive from where the Reverend stashed it, and she immediately plugs it in when the Reverend stops her, but she has already seen what is on it. Shocked by what reveals itself, the unexpected takes place.
Jefferson Grieff, a former Law Professor of Criminology, is on death row for killing and beheading his wife. His fellow inmate Dillon Kempton has killed 14 women and done other gruesome things to their dead bodies displaying acts of cannibalism. Those 14 women include his mother. Both individuals are dangerous to anyone who sits in front of them, yet there is a caveat.
Grieff acts as a detective from the prison, provides solutions, and hears cases to deduce the culprits as people come with queries to cases that require answers. Kempton acts as his stenographer using photographic memory. Grieff has only one condition. Moral Worth to attain atonement. While Beth Davenport interviewed him to write an article about the cases he investigates, it left Beth bemused by his nonchalant presence of mind towards her and her disposition.
Reverend Harry, known by two names, ‘ The Dark Vicar’ and ‘The Sexy Vicar,’ lives in England and has a priest named Edgar, a porn addict and a suicide risk to himself. Edgar’s mother keeps a close eye on him, and Edgar is rather terrified of her. Just before she turns up to check on him at the church, Edgar pleads with Rev. Harry to stash away a flash drive with a tremendous amount of porn.
When Rev. Harry takes the flash drive to save Edgar, Janice innocently opens it to discover child porn on it. When she reprimands Rev. Harry, his son, Ben admits to seeing and storing porn on his flash drive. Janice is quick to believe that the flash drive belongs to Ben and wants to turn it in to the Police, but Rev. Harry won’t have it because he knows the truth. It’s not his son’s flash drive.
What happens next is Rev Harry does not let Janice leave. Terrified that she will tell the Police, he ‘unintentionally’ traps her in his basement after he broke her phone when she tried to take a video of him restraining her from leaving the house. Bruised and bloody, Janice has sent a blurry picture from her phone to Beth, the journalist she rescued. Unbeknownst to Rev. Harry, Janice has reached the outside while someone trapped her, and Harry informs his wife of what he has done. Mary, his wife, panics but is now abetting holding Janice hostage in their house without their son, Ben, knowing of the events that have just occurred.
As Janice is terrified, her mind is alert and active. She works quickly to ensure that Rev Harry is not in control and pees and puts her blood everywhere around their basement. This would prove that she was present on their premises if they killed her. Rev. Harry is confident he can get a confession out of Edgar in time to release Janice for her 4 pm call with her sister in Canada from her WebMail account to let her know she is alive. However, things change for everyone involved when Ben gets trapped in the basement with Janice, and Edgar kills himself after Rev Harry tries to force a confession out of Edgar.
Inside Man 2022 Season 1 Ending, Explained
How does Professor Grieff rescue Janice?
Beth opens the message Janice has sent her and approaches Grieff to solve the case of her missing friend Janice. While clarifying that she must never mention Janice’s name, he allows her to overlook another case he has taken to write about for her readership. Appalled by the deal, Beth works with him. But he only does this to distract her and keep track of where Janice could be with his secret resources outside the prison. After breaking a certain case down and leading her to the culprit, Grieff tells her she must take a flight to England to Janice’s flat. Only Beth does not know it’s Janice’s flat.
When Ben smells something fishy about Janice, he hears his mother screaming about the fact that Janice is trapped in the basement. Ben finds an alternate duplicate key and goes downstairs to see Janice beaten, bloody, and cut. After repeatedly asking what is happening, Janice does not answer the question about why his father has locked her up. After trying to force Edgar to admit that he had given the flash drive to him, Edgar is keeping a secret. In this emotional trauma, Edgar commits suicide and leaves a note saying that the vicar is not a pedophile but is protecting someone else.
The Police find this note and notify Harry and come around to question him. When they do, Harry sees the note and reads it out loud. Mary and Janice are listening on the phone through a call and get a jolt when the implication could be that Janice is a pedophile while being protected by Harry turning everything upside down and making matters worse.
Meanwhile, Harry and his wife Mary are contemplating emailing after Janice has cleverly tried to earn their trust separately to divide and conquer to ensure her release. Harry and Mary decide to leave a heater that leaks carbon monoxide in the basement to ‘keep Janice warm’ while quietly committing murder. While the carbon monoxide took some time to poison them both, Ben swoons in confusion because of the poisoning and puts together that Janice wanted to implicate his father in the discovery of child porn in the flash drive.
Mary has understood that the email has implicated her and Harry and is struggling to tell Harry about it, who is avoiding his phone. But because Harry has left the heater on, he locks his wife out of the house and seals the basement door where Ben and Janice are still present. Only he does not know Ben is in the basement. Even though Ben has been banging at the door to be let out. When Beth reaches Janice’s apartment, she meets with Mary, who is struggling to get to the loo because she needs to pee, but Beth is curious to know how Mary got in without ringing the bell.
When Ben calls his mother asking for the truth, he tells her he is in the basement of their house, and Mary panics. While trying to fight off Beth, Mary keeps calling Harry to tell him Ben is in the basement, but he does not answer his phone. Mary backs onto the road to get hit by a bus and dies. But Ben is quick to believe in his delirious state that Janice would implicate him, and he whacks Janice’s head with a hammer and suddenly realizes he could have killed her. After setting a timer of one hour to ensure Janice’s death, Harry bursts into the cellar and discovers Janice’s dead body and his confused son.
When Harry goes to check If Janice is dead, Beth is already on her way to Mary’s house with Morag, Grieff’s acquaintance in England. Beth sees Ben running away from the house scared, and Morag goes after him. Beth rescues Janice when Harry is about to swing a final blow to her head and tackles him to the ground. When Beth and Harry are struggling with each other in a fight, three people turn up with axes and shovels.
It turns out the prison warden where Grieff is serving his sentence allowed Grieff to confess to his wife’s father about where his daughter’s head could be buried. After beating him up, Grieff named a location. Rev Harry’s residence. He misled them because of his execution date being scheduled, and he knew he could not get an extension, no matter how much he pleaded for it. Grieff never told Beth he would not help her find Janice, and he only told her not to mention her name, allowing him to work in the shadows to find her. When Janice’s schedule showed her last appointment with no missing persons report, there was only one deduction. She never left the last appointment.
Final Thoughts:
This mini-series spanning four hours is a fantastic narrative that is stretched. While deceit is in constant play, it makes this series an alluring pull. Stanley Tucci has played the villain before but portrays the swooning and dark side of the human psyche in this series. David Tennant portrays a slow descent into madness due to his impulsive decisions, plunging the character’s family into an antithetical situation very unlike any individual’s everyday life in England. Towards the end, we see Janice Fife meeting Grieff in prison, with his execution date set within a week. Janice asks for advice on how to kill her husband, and Grieff is ready to help. We eagerly await a second season.
Director David Fincher mentions,” Every writer must make sure that in any argument, everyone is right. Everyone should have a righteous side of the argument. That is when it is an exciting drama.” Steven Moffat, with executive Producer Sue Vertue and Alex Mercer, delivers exactly that. All cheesiness aside, they did. Moffat’s recent title,’ The Devil’s Hour 2022,’ is still his better release, and I stand by that.
