Why Inside Man should be your next box set
Review Overview
Cast
8Script
6Conundrums
7David Farnor | On 01, Oct 2022
Stanley Tucci and David Tennant are the star draws in this new drama from Steven Moffat, which brings together a vicar in a quiet town, a maths teacher trapped in a cellar and a prisoner on death row.
You can feel the script twisting to make these contrived connections fit, as tutor Janice (a steely Dolly Wells) finds herself on the wrong side of a family man trying to protect his own – and David Tennant is excellent as a man exploring the line between doing the right thing and taking several wrong turns along the way to achieving that end. He’s tortured, intense and pained, but buries those underneath a politeness that’s understated and volatile – it’s a superb dissection of human, and British, nature, and you’ll find yourself teetering between sympathy and despair at his actions.
And, in between them all, Stanley Tucci is visibly having lots of fun as a convicted murderer pronouncing moral judgements on others and working as a sort of Sherlock-for-hire behind bars – he can ooze this kind of laconic authority in his sleep, but there are enough meaty contradictions to give him something to sink his teeth into.
Perhaps inevitably, the more all these characters’ paths cross, the less plausible Inside Man becomes. Even keeping things at a taut four episodes, Moffat’s script gets a little too laboured in its lectures on how anyone’s morals can be dismissed when they are put under pressure. As a star-studded pulpy thriller, though, this contorted maze of ethical dilemmas is a fun ride.