Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Inside Man’ On Netflix, Where David Tennant Is A Vicar In Trouble And Stanley Tucci Is A Death Row Inmate That Solves Mysteries

Steven Moffat is one of the more revered writers/showrunners on TV, mainly because the high points of his career — Sherlock, Coupling, Doctor Who — have had some exhilarating moments. But even during those high points, Moffat has been a victim of his own inability to rein himself in from making things to arch or silly. The worst of his filmography — The Time Traveler’s Wife being the most recent example — shows what happens when he lets his instinct towards cheekiness run rampant. So where does his latest series, Inside Man, lie on that spectrum?

INSIDE MAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: On the Tube, a creepy guy manspreads in his seat and stares a little too long at the woman across from him.

The Gist: As he creeps on the woman, he also threatens another woman who takes his picture on her phone. To combat that, a third woman tells him he’s being livestreamed on Facebook, which prompts others to follow suit. The woman who was the initial victim, an investigative reporter named Beth Davenport (Lydia West), approaches the woman, Janice Fife (Dolly Wells), to thank her and gives Janice her card before Janice gets in a car with the local vicar, Harry Watling (David Tennant).

Meanwhile, in a maximum security prison in the United States, death row inmate Jefferson Grieff (Stanley Tucci) is summoned by a senator to solve a mystery involving his wife and money coming into his account whenever they have sex. Apparently, Grieff, who readily admits to murdering his wife, has taken to solving people’s mysteries, with the help of his “recorder,” Dillon Kempton (Atkins Estimond), a serial killer with a photographic memory. The warden, Casey (Dylan Baker), gives Grieff a lot of leeway because of this ability. The senator’s case doesn’t meet his “criteria,” however, for reasons only Grieff knows.

On another day, Harry is about to leave work at his church, when Edgar (Mark Quartley), a worker at the church, bursts into his office and asks him to take a thumb drive full of his porn. Edgar is afraid his strict mother will find it. Seeing evidence of suicide attempts on Edgar’s wrists, he takes it. He picks up Janice and brings her to his house; she’s a math tutor for his son Ben (Louis Oliver). Through a series of misunderstandings too convoluted to explain here, Ben hands Janice that thumb drive so she can download an assignment, and she sees it has child porn on it. Ben claims it’s his, but a horrified Harry tries to explain to Janice where he got it. Of course, Janice doesn’t believe him, so Harry claims it’s his, begs her not to go to the police and, in desperation, forces her into his basement and locks the door.

Beth is in the U.S. during this time, having gotten to know Janice a bit in the interim. She’s there to interview Grieff about his being a “death row detective.” He tells her that his criteria for taking cases is “moral worth,” because he wants to do good with the limited time he has left. Otherwise, he’s a pretty difficult interview and doesn’t give her much to work with. When she gets back to her hotel, though, she sees a text from Janice that makes her worried. Imagine her luck that she now has someone nearby who can help her solve this mystery?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Inside Man feels like Sherlock meets Hannibal meets The Patient, for reasons we’ll specify below.

Our Take: We’re starting to think that Steven Moffat, who created and wrote Inside Man, is the British equivalent of Ryan Murphy. Either his shows are brilliant or they’re patently ridiculous. And the more we think about how the story of Inside Man is set up and structured, the more we think that this four-part miniseries is patently ridiculous.

Moffat has to bend himself into a narrative pretzel in order to set up the idea of “cool vicar” Harry, a supposed man of God, being in the position of having Janice locked in his basement. We seriously can’t explain all the machinations, coincidences and misunderstandings it took to get him into this mess, because we just don’t think it would read very clearly. As it is, it feels like Harry is more caricature than character, because we have absolutely no time with him before he finds himself in this predicament. Janice isn’t much better, but at least some of the tactics she uses when she’s held captive give us an idea how clever she really is.

But that’s just half the show. The other half is Tucci as this death row Sherlock Holmes (see our reference above). We actually get a lot of time with Grieff, via both the initial mystery that he finds doesn’t meet his “moral worth” criteria and during the drawn out interview sequence with Beth — another character, by the way, that’s more of a character sketch than someone real. Tucci lays on his usual charm as Grieff, and an entire show could be created around his character, with Dillon being his murderous Dr. Watson. Just the tease of the senator’s case and Grieff’s theory — something he came up with instantaneously — was effective enough for us to want to see more of that.

By marrying what would likely be an effective and somewhat unorthodox detective drama with an insane kidnapping storyline, neither story gets enough air, and we suspect that it’ll be that way even as Grieff helps Beth figure out just what happened to Janice. Oh, and here’s another thing: After the first scene, the only way we get an idea that Janice and Beth have become friends is via a text message. So there’s really no basis for her to care that much about Janice that she’d throw away the story she’s working on in order to get him to help figure out what happened to her, or even to guess that there’s a problem in the first place.

So, like we said, it’s all patently ridiculous. If it were ridiculous in an entertaining way, that would be one thing. But Tennant’s side of the story is just so insane that you’ll be too distracted by it to be entertained by Tucci’s side.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Casey tells Grieff that Beth wants him to help her solve a case.

Sleeper Star: Estimond is really funny as Dillon, especially as he argues with the security guard that he only killed 13 people and not 14, because the last one died months after he attacked her.

Most Pilot-y Line: As Harry and Janice drive from the Tube station to his house, their supposed rapport with each other is established through this exchange: “What do you want to talk about this time? Politics or young people?” asks Harry. “Young people,” replies Janice. “Aren’t they awful?” “Awful!” “Honestly, there are more of them every day.” And chuckles ensue. It’s such a perfunctory scene that it really has no effect on establishing what their relationship was like before things went sideways.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There are some witty moments in Inside Man and Tucci is especially good as Grieff. But the whole idea behind the show pivots on an insane misunderstanding that has its characters jumping through too many hoops to be beliveable.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.