Inside Man and the Plausibility Problem

"Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible." Francis Bacon

Spoilers for Inside Man. Lots of them…

This may be a bit of a long rant, and in my defence, it was born of disappointment. I’ve enjoyed Steven Moffat’s writing for many years. I even liked Joking Apart. I loved Coupling - apart from the last series. Some of his Dr Who episodes were real favourites - The Empty Child in particular. And Blink. He created Amy Pond and River Song! Then there were the addictive delights of Sherlock, and Dracula.

So when I read about Inside Man, and that the premise it was exploring was the question of what makes good people do bad things, including murder, I was so much looking forward to it.

That was, after all, the premise of my own first novel, A Savage Art.

And David Tennant too - what could possibly go wrong?

I watched every episode, all the time growing more and more disappointed.

As I’ve been working on my third novel - which has turned out to be a bit of a romp - albeit a romp with a rather dark heart - I have spent a lot of time thinking about plausibility.

I think plausibility is most often a question about the characters- who they are, and the various things which made them that way. The best crime fiction is driven by character. Sometimes readers point to Agatha Christie to refute this, but actually, even in the puzzle mystery, the people in the story and who they are and why is always part of the puzzle.

The greatest mystery in life, after all, is why are people the way they are?

It’s not a particularly high bar, either - plausibility. It’s not that the story has to be something which might happen every day to any one of us. In fact, if it was, that would make fiction a bit boring, wouldn’t it?

We want to read about - or watch dramas about - interesting and unique people who are dealing with unusual challenges and difficult times.

So story and drama only needs to be plausible this one time - with these particular characters, in these particular circumstances.

When I start developing a story, that’s exactly where I start from.

The first episode opened really well, with a brilliantly dramatic scene featuring a creepy young man, and introducing a couple of female characters I enjoyed and could believe in. Beth Davenport is the young journalist who is the only character (until, ahem, the teaser at the end…) to take part in the storyline involving the English vicarage AND Death Row. And Janice Fife is the intelligent, stubborn and not entirely sane maths tutor.

So we have a great start - with two quite different characters, both of whom show courage and independent thought.

This is what the drama promises us at the beginning.

From there, it all goes downhill rather rapidly.

Death Row

Not completely downhill, though. The second scene introduces us to two men on Death Row - Jefferson Grieff - a criminologist who murdered his wife - and Dillon Kempton - a serial killer who (we are informed quickly and with relish) ate his mother’s feet. He reassures us, with a cheeky grin, that she was dead at the time. Kempton has a photographic memory and is there to be Grieff’s recording angel…

This double act is the one premise of the show which kind-of works - although there are elements of it I find difficult to stomach, as I will explain later.

Grieff is whiling away his time on Death Row by considering various cases and finding solutions - a kind of Sherlock Holmes character, if you will. He claims that he only takes on cases where he can do good - that it’s an attempt to balance the scales of justice, to make up in some way for having killed his wife. I have my doubts.

So the double act serves to show us how clever Grieff is…. with the help of Kempton, who is the idiot savant Watson parallel.

This very first case - the strange story of rapist Senator Kreiner, his victim and the vengeful wife, illustrates straight away that his claim to only take on cases with “moral worth” is suspect. After all, he knew well in advance that Kreiner was a rapist and that he would turn him down. So what is he up to? Amusing himself while he waits to die? Playing cat and mouse in the only way accessible to him?

This is a man who plays mind games. It’s best that we don’t forget that.

The Dark Vicar

In the next scene we are introduced to the vicar… Harry Watling, played very well indeed by David Tennant.

(My quibbles are entirely with the story - not with the performances)

Harry Watling is a man who is soon demonstrated to not have much of a mind to play games with…

His behaviour, from the very first episode, is over-the-top, ridiculously implausible. We see him all hail-fellow-well-met, cheerily waving goodbye to the congregation nice as pie.

Then he has a chat with the church organist.

“The choir will be two down on Wednesday.’

“Permanent or temporary?”

“Just colds,” she replies.

“The average age is seventy two. Every long note’s a cliff hanger.”

“That’s dark,’ she says. “You’re a dark person.”

“I’m a vicar,” says Watling.

"Well you’re a dark vicar.”

“Oh I like that. The dark vicar. I’m having that.”

Dark AND inept, it has to be said.

But that’s it. That’s the foreshadowing. I waited and waited but there was nothing else. There wasn’t even much in the way of backstory until the final episode and I was, by then, desperate for some help to make sense of it all.

The Unravelling

This is Henry Watling’s bad day. I summarised, but it’s still long. Sorry.

First, he agrees to look after Edgar the verger’s flash drive. He knows it’s porn. Edgar is vulnerable (we see the scars on his wrists - it’s a bit heavy handed!) and his mother - well, she’s pretty terrifying. So yes, a bit of sympathy might be in order - but really, this is awfully trusting for a vicar.

Then he goes to pick up his son’s maths tutor… and then there’s a series of unfortunate events. The internet is down. The Dark Vicar (who I think is really a bit of a wet Vicar, but there you go) makes a stupid joke about draining the world of naked women, and Janice the maths tutor - who was established in the first scene as being a bit technologically inept - needs to email some modules from her laptop.

So anyway, it all ends up with bad jokes from the Vicar’s son, Ben, about the flash drive containing porn, which Ben claims is his….

Janice sees it. And of course it’s child porn.

A very stupid conversation follows with a lot of noise and no clarity. The Dark Vicar is reluctant to tell Janice whose it is - I presume some sort of thing about being protective of Edgar.

When he realises she doesn’t believe him - he says it’s his. This is supposed to be an urge to protect his son - although I’m not convinced that everyone knowing your dad is a dodgy vicar with a penchant for kiddie porn is much protection.

He loses his temper, mostly because Janice is quite rightly very concerned.

“Why is this any of your business?” is a bit mad, coming from a vicar, given that it is surely ALL of our business.

Janice quite rightly insists it has to go to the police, and Watling doesn’t want to.

Wouldn’t every one of us see that as a red flag?

He explains that the man at the church is vulnerable - a suicide risk - and he says he will deal with it - but it’s easy to understand why Janice is not inclined to accept his authority. And looking at it all from her point of view - my point of view too! - why should she?

From there is all goes downhill. He lays his hands on her. There’s a physical struggle and she gets her phone out, and he breaks it. She makes a run for it, falls and hurts her head - and before you know it she’s screaming and he pushes her down into the cellar and locks her in, which becomes a point of no return.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell the whole story. I just felt I needed to go into detail here because this scene is the key to the implausibility of the whole damn thing.

Sixth Form Moral Philosophy

Ignoring the common sense issues for now. He’s a vicar. He has surely spent some time thinking seriously about moral issues.

Why does he not understand why Janice cannot look away from this? Child porn is not a victimless crime. There are real children being harmed all the time to feed the insatiable need some have for this kind of stuff. There are survivors who live with the knowledge that there are still people getting off on their trauma.

He may have intended to do something about it - but why should Janice believe he will, considering all the tactics he used to get her to let it go?

His duty to Edgar - suicidal as he is - does not extend to covering up this kind of crime. He was foolish to accept the flash drive in the first place. He didn’t have to tell Janice who it was, but he should have agreed straight away to call the police.

I can understand that people sometimes act foolishly as an instinct to protect their family members - but this is a man who could be expected to have thought these issues through.

Of course, he’s a vicar, and we are all aware of the news stories about a minority of priests from different religions.

Through every episode I was waiting for some backstory - a previous accusation, or contact with someone with a record in a previous parish - some reason why he might react so badly in this situation. Something may making his quip about being the Dark Vicar even darker.

Nothing.

Not a single thing.

The Failure of Common Sense

If Watling and Janice approached the police together, and she was allowed to tell her story, and he told his - perhaps keeping Edgar’s identity confidential from Janice, then what is the risk to Ben?

The police could investigate. Because he hasn’t been a plonker in this scenario, Janice won’t spread rumours before the investigation is concluded. And Edgar needs more help than a Vicar can give him. His vulnerability would be taken into account in any court case. It’s not for an individual, even a vicar, to make decisions on behalf of society, after all.

However much he responded on instinct, the moment Janice showed she was afraid - that should have given him pause.

And does he not understand the minimum about digital forensics? (Don’t either him of his wife Mary know about browser histories, come to that?) He knows enough to add more porn to his own computer to make his confession look plausible.

Did they really not watch Line of Duty?

It gets worse

Of course it does. That’s the story. Moffat heaps stupidity upon stupidity.

Henry Watling’s wife comes home and finds out her son’s math’s tutor has been hurt and is locked in the cellar. She seems to brush off the child porn issue a little too easily and all too enthusiastically joins in with the plan to permanently solve the problem of Janice.

Why?

Is knitting not entertaining enough for her?

Janice is a totally fascinating character and goes from brave and intelligent to outright lunatic in very short order. In this case, right at the end of Episode 4, we do perhaps have a clue as to why.

It is enjoyable though to see how she torments the vicar and his wife. She deliberately bleeds and pees all over the cellar so that there will be evidence of where she’s been kept. She manages to turn them against each other, at least briefly. She uses her intelligence to keep Watling off balance and makes it harder for any of them to find a way back. It’s dramatically satisfying but makes a nonsense of this idea that she’s intelligent.

There is the tiniest bit of backstory about Janice quite early on. She says she never liked the vicar anyway. It’s only a throwaway line, perhaps, but it does rather lose her some of the moral high ground.

Watling then tracks down and mercilessly bullies Edgar - the guy he was so worried about he didn’t want to report him to the police. He even uses the whole religious thing as part of his bullying, which in itself must rank fairly high on the sin scale. Much higher than legitimately reporting him to the police for the possession of child porn. He left the vulnerable man in a more vulnerable state than ever - to the point where Edgar killed himself.

Where, I am asking myself, is the evidence that Henry Watling is in any way a good man?

Beth Davenport

Meanwhile, Beth has gone off to America - her intention to interview Jefferson Grieff.

She gets a message from Janice, which indicates she’s in trouble, and then can’t get in touch - because the Vicar has her broken phone.

So she asks Grieff for help with the case. At first he refuses. And he puts Beth through his usual cat-and-mouse moral maze.

These Death Row scenes are the best part of the whole drama, and perhaps there’ll be another series… I think this story line could carry it, but -

The hapless Vicar, his Wife and their Son

What a terrible mess they get into, between them all.

Mary throws herself enthusiastically into murder plans, and comes up with the plan to put a dodgy heater in the cellar and kill Janice off with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Ben, the son, comes home and discovers Janice in the cellar. He’s talking to her when his father puts the heater down there and doesn’t reveal himself.

He has a phone, which is running out of charge, and he could phone his father or the police at any time…

Janice talks to him and - okay, she might be hiding it - but she doesn’t seem at all to suspect Ben of being into child porn. It’s as if it could only be the vicar now.

All this stuff piles crisis on crisis and it makes for very suspenseful drama - maybe enough to help suspend disbelief? But no, not quite. It carried me along, but increasingly seemed mad.

In a complicated chain of circumstances Beth Davenport and Mary Watling end up in Janice’s flat. Mary makes a mess of explaining why she’s there, Beth chases her, and she ends up stepping back into the path of a speeding truck.

Splat.

(And that’s another thing. I really didn’t care much what happened to any of them)

Meanwhile in the cellar, Ben is growing increasingly unhinged, and attacks Janice with a hammer.

And Beth arrives at the vicarage as Henry is finally, finally calling the police.

The Inadequate Backstory in Episode Four.

My hopes were raised for a few minutes, as we were treated to a little bit of the story of Janice and Ben. We saw something of who they were and their early relationship as she persuaded Ben to do some work. She convinced him that it would be easier and smarter to work steadily and not to skive off and then cram.

We also saw some of the relationship between Henry Watling and Janice. She basically swanned in and took over his study - and he was too wimpish to complain and to suggest they work somewhere else. He resented it, but said nothing. She knew - raised it, but in such a manipulative way that he was bound to agree to give up his study to her.

I was hoping for something more. I guess weakness is almost enough to be Watling’s tragic flaw. Weakness and stupidity. But if that’s it, it rather ruins the premise that the story is about why good people kill, doesn’t it?

Spectacle

Yes, people are stupid, but that doesn’t make a good answer for the question, “What makes good people commit murder?”

It was a compelling watch mostly because of the brilliant cast and especially the death row scenes, but it was spectacle rather than story.

Story needs plausibility and I was so shocked by the lack of it, that I have gone on for far too long about how it all happened.

So not really story or drama, this was Spectacle. Rather like American Wrestling became Sports Entertainment rather than sport. In fact, I would suggest some of the American Wrestling guys did better storytelling than this.

It has been entertaining to see lots of theorising on twitter with people trying to make sense of it all - and with those who say, it’s Moffat, it doesn’t have to make sense…

I did enjoy the twist right at the end though.

And finally, the Big Lie - Grieff talks to Watling.

Now this was absolutely fascinating.

I liked it a great deal, but I have my suspicions that not everyone saw it the way I did. Not even Moffat.

I was really quite irritated by the way Grieff tried to guilt Watling over his wife’s death. He pointed out that Mary would still be alive, but for Tennant’s actions.

No, really? A wife doesn’t have her own agency? She always had the option to let Janice out of the cellar, and she certainly didn’t have to participate so enthusiastically. The fear that her son would die of carbon monoxide poisoning in the cellar was all due to her finding the heater and suggesting it! So that was on her own head, not his.

This is the key part of Grieff’s speech.

“There are moments that make murderers of us all. We are not freaks in cages to be stared at and judged and written about as though we are a breed apart. We are anyone, on a bad day. Cracks can open in the most ordinary life and swallow anyone at all. No one is safe, from the worst that they can do. There are very few advantages to having the blood of a loved one on your hands, but at least you know who you are. Who you’ve always been. The lies are cleared away, and you understand him at last, the man behind your eyelids. Terrifying, isn’t he? Welcome to the inside.”

I’m sharing an interview below, where Stanley Tucci, who did such a great job of playing the character of Grieff, says he thinks this is true.

It really isn’t.

He talks about the impulse to push a man to his death, when he was just outside their hotel window.

This example from his own life is clearly self defence - and that, or defending other people - is not really what anyone means by murder.

And why would anyone believe what a criminal says about their crime, especially a murderer?

It’s a rationalisation, at best.

At worst… well.

When I was studying criminology in the 90s I read a few prisoners’ memoirs - and what was fascinating was the way the reasons they gave for their crimes always echoed current sociological explanations.

We are all good at justifying our own actions in retrospect

And yet, take a look around. How many of us have been defrauded, betrayed, grievously hurt by other people? I cannot imagine there are many of us who haven’t been, at one time or another.

It doesn’t even take a particularly good person NOT to kill.

Again, why believe what a criminal tells you - whether they are talking about their own crime, or how they came to commit it. Whether they are theorising about crime in general. Would we read Ian Brady to work out what makes a serial killer tick?

Grieff was clearly out to convince Watling that he was as bad as Grieff. That all it takes is a bad day.

I confess I would watch another series to find out what Grieff’s bad day was like - especially having met his wife’s father in this one.

But the argument is clearly delusional or manipulative - perhaps both. All it tells us at best is what Grieff wants us to believe. That he’s no worse than anyone else. Which looking back, makes me suspect that all that guff about his morality, and about accepting he deserves to die - well, it’s just a story.

There is one very good storyteller here, after all.

What a writer can learn from this

A few days ago, I was talking to a fellow writer about how when I'm editing my novel, I am always finding elements that the story needs which are just hinted at and underdeveloped

I have a feeling that's what's going on here. Moffat just didn't spend the time properly developing what is there, underneath

Another writer friend pointed out that Moffat was maybe saving it for the next series, which is possible.

To my mind, that’s neither sensible, nor necessary.

There’s always more where that creativity comes from, and it’s no excuse for not making a good story NOW

In the end, what irritates me about Inside Man, is that these problems are down to laziness. It was exciting to watch, it had plenty of momentum, I always wanted to know what would happen next.

But if I knew more about why, more about what made the characters who they were, if it had just been a but more plausible - well, instead of being a bit of a romp, it could have been a work of genius.

So near, and yet…

Please do feel free to let me know if I’ve missed something, or is you have a different interpretation.

Ann

LINKS

Fascinating interview with Stanley Tucci, leading me to suspect he believes what he says in character as Grieff!

Moffat on the defensive - I do actually agree with him about the misogyny - it’s not that simple anyway.

Nice to see David Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Criminology agrees with me - The Independent