The Cutprice Guignol

Alright, I think we’ve hit the first episode in the show’s run that I just…don’t like.

Tom & Gerri, the third episode of Inside No. 9’s first season, follows Tom (Shearsmith), a schoolteacher who sinks into a depressive episode after he allows Migg (Pemberton), a homeless man, into his life, straining his relationship with his girlfriend Gerri (Gemma Arterton, incredible actor and star of The Girl with All the Gifts which is so, so good and that I’m obliged to remind everyone about at every opportunity, please and thank you).

This episode was initially written long before Inside No. 9 was so much as a twinkle in the psyche of Shearsmith and Pemberton, during the League of Gentlemen years, and to be honest, I think it shows. It’s not that I hate this episode – there are very few episodes of the shows I outright hate, though there are a few I would skip over on a rewatch – but it feels like something that would have felt a lot fresher coming out ten years before it actually hit the screens in 2014, you know?

Which is not to say that there’s isn’t plenty like about this episode – not least because the meat of it hinges on screentime shared by Pemberton and Shearsmith. I truly cannot overstate how much I love to see the two of them together like this – their specific creative partnership, which stretches behind the camera and in front of it, is a truly special and relatively unique thing, especially this far into both of their careers, and the chemistry that springs from it is one of the reasons I love this show as much as I do. I love the way Pemberton, especially, plays his role – straddling that line between over-friendly and vulnerable, putting your hackles up and then making you feel bad for making snap judgements.

But where the episode struggles for me is in the way the twist unfolds. It’s implied at first that Migg is a figment of Tom’s imagination, but the true twist comes in the last scene: his girlfriend has actually been dead all along, and she’s the one Tom has been hallucinating. Migg’s body is rotting in the bathroom (like me after a particularly sweaty 5k), murdered at the hands of Tom. Look, I have to say it: this feels hackneyed in a way that horror and thriller media from the late 90s and early 2000s often was (think something like 2003’s Identity), framing the mentally ill and especially those who suffer from psychosis of some kind as dangerous and capable of violence as a result of their illness.

I know there are people who will think I’m just hand-wringing over something silly here, but I cannot stand to see this shit propagated in pop culture – probably because I’m mental myself, but anyway, I think the point still stands. People who suffer from mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than they are to commit it, but these kinds of stories reinforce the opposite idea and grow the stigma that’s already so prevalent around people who are mentally ill, and especially people with psychotic disorders. For how bold and experimental I think a lot of the writing is in Inside No. 9, to see them fall back on such an overused and harmful trope just doesn’t match the quality that the show would go on to make a calling card.

So, yeah, this episode is the first that I don’t love (but, given how much I adore the first couple of episodes of this season, I get that it’s hard to keep up that level of sheer quality). I’d love to know what you think of this episode in the comments, especially with regards to how much the representation of mental illness on TV has changed – and where it ranks as part of the show in retrospect!

If you liked this article and want to see more stuff like it, please check out the rest of my Inside No. 9 reviews. I’d also love it if you would check out my horrible short story collection, and, if you’d like to support my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

(header image via IMDB)