The Cutprice Guignol

The thing about Death Be Not Proud, this episode of Inside No. 9 is that it’s…not actually an episode of Inside No. 9.

Which you’d think would be nigh-on impossible for a show with as much tonal and genre flexibility as this one has – hell, in the last few seasons, we’ve gone between gothic horror, Shakespearean comedy-of-errors, giallo, and train-farting with absolute ease. But this episode, rather than working as another entry into Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s brilliant anthology, instead serves as an epilogue for Psychoville, their previous outing in the world of television. And…it’s not very good.

I don’t mind Psychoville (though I have been tempted to go back and do a rewatch when these recaps are done – would anyone be interested in reading episode reviews of that show, too?), but I also really don’t love it – it’s a bit of an awkward middle ground between the surreal and bizarre world of League of Gentlemen and the more polished, grounded storytelling in Inside No. 9. Yes, there’s some really fun stuff in it (my personal favourite character, Mr Jelly, steals the show in this episode in about ninety seconds and a single rabbit murder), but it feels like it comes from another part of their career, and that jars pretty badly with what Inside No. 9 has established itself to be by this point in its run.

The episode revolves around Beattie (a dreadfully wasted Jenna Coleman, who basically just sits in front of Steve Pemberton and a cup of tea for most of the episode’s runtime) and her partner Sam as they move into a flat that was once occupied by Maureen and David Sowerbutts (Shearsmith and Pemberton, respectively), only for Beattie to start experiencing bizarre phenomena that point to a haunting in her new home. It starts off as a reasonably interesting haunted house story, only to take a veer into a strange sort of black comedy when David turns up to recount his post-Psychoville life story to her and raid her cupboard for Wagon Wheels.

What really lets this episode down, for me, is how tonally jarring it is compared to the rest of the show so far. Psychoville’s blackly comic tone feels more edgily juvenile when put up against Inside No. 9 as a whole, the deliberately uncomfortable humour looking more cheap and lazy in comparison. This episode has a joke about the inappropriate sexual relationship between David and Maureen, and, in a show that started out with Sardines, it seems downright crass. It’s a lot of bare-minimum, lowest-common-denominator funny voices and bad wigs and fake teeth, in a show that’s so often pushed the boat out with challenging narrative approaches and storytelling techniques. Sure, there are some moments here that work – the Soulja Boy dance is so stupid as to come back around to being funny, and the true crime obsession stuff has some snap and wit to it – but as a whole, it just doesn’t belong in Inside No. 9.

And it’s not even a particularly compelling follow-up to Psychoville, either. While I’m not a huge fan of the show, I can’t see this being much more than a slightly rambling chance for fans to touch base with these characters in a way that doesn’t change much of what we already know about them. There’s just not enough time here to really get into the things that made the show fun to watch in the first place, with just half an hour to give us a fully-fledged story – it doesn’t fit here, and it shows, straining at the seams to give us a Psychoville episode in a series that just doesn’t need it.

Death Be Not Proud is neither a good episode of Inside No. 9 or a good episode of Psychoville – or, in general, a good episode as a whole, in my opinion. I would love to hear what you think about it – are you a fan of Psychoville, and, if so, did this work for you? Let me know in the comments!

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 The Boar)