Inside Man

This show is riddled with plot holes, it is inconsistent in tone, and baffling at times, but it's still a fun ride if you sit back and suspend disbelief and avoid analyzing it too deeply. If you struggle with unbelievable storylines or character decisions, this won't be for you. However, the actors performances hold up and you'll be wanting to see what happens next. It's a mix of older BBC murder mystery series, Sherlock, and a bunch of weird writing decisions in between. It's not a show you'll want to go out of your way for, but if you want a short series that's relatively mindless and entertaining, this will do the trick.

I can certainly understand not liking this, but it seems like a lot of the negative takes have come from people expecting it to be something else. I guess because of who was involved in its creation, a lot of people expected something along the lines of Sherlock. Maybe there was also some misleading marketing involved, but if so, I missed it.

What it reminds me of more than anything else (and *far* more than Sherlock) is Fargo, both the movie and the FX series. It's a dark comedy with two main plot lines, one about regular people who get themselves into a criminal misunderstanding, make a series of bad decisions in the ensuing panic and progressively making the situation worse for themselves until it all unravels, and the other about a journalist collaborating with an eccentric, hyper-competent death row inmate to rescue the person who got imprisoned in one of the former group's early bad decisions. I'm not gonna deny that it's implausible and absurd, but I think that's by design.

If you go in expecting Sherlock, you'll probably be disappointed. If you go in expecting Fargo, I think it'll be enjoyable enough.

This show pulled me in within the first 15 minutes. The storyline is a complicated, frustrating mess from the off. It is a reminder how anyone can find themselves in a predicament which leads them to do silly things that they would never have thought possible. The first episode is the best for comic value but the episodes get a little darker as they go along and the last is the most frustrating but not in a bad way. It is just like the characters. All likeable, but annoying because of the things they do. This is definitely set up for a sequel and I will be tuning in. Very smart script and so very watchable.

This show sets up some contrived circumstances, in the first episode, somewhat rapidly in succession. Without going into details it requires a fair bit of suspension of belief, because literally none of those events would occur anything like that.

There's language that people don't really use in real life, that are somewhat more common in niche circles - and I notice this is for some reason common in British, and in particular BBC television series. I'm not really sure what it is about the BBC, but they have a way of creating TV that is particularly out of touch with reality.

On the positive side the acting is fine, the characters would be fairly compelling if in slightly less contrived scenarios and it isn't boring by any means, it just has a persistent distracting quality about it.

So much talent, actors and writers, but what a farce. They probably had to first come up with a list of plotholes to then write a story around it. I can't imagine running into so many problems when writing the story first... Every possible cliche is present. Should get stars only for that achievement.

• Empty phone battery
• Sudden and irrational change of mind at crucial point in story
• Calling each other and the others ignoring the call
• When they eventually answer the phone, talk about anything other than the thing they WANTED to get across
• Endless trivial discussions to actively ignore the topic you had to get off your chest. Next time, talk about the weather, at least *something* interesting to listen to.

• Ending up at the other side of the world for no apparent reason
• Convenient van to run over the one character that can make a difference.