2.1 La Couchette Following Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s first run of disturbing tales, absorbing plots and carefully sprung surprises, series two opened with a belter, La Couchette. Starting with a deceptively simple set up, the episode quickly established where we’d be for the next half-hour, with an exterior shot of a train at night andd a brief walk through its interior to the door of Couchette number 9. Inside, curtains were swiftly shut on the outside world, trapping us within a cramped compartment of six stacked bunk beds along with an uptight-looking fellow in pyjamas (Shearsmith), settling down to sleep. He’s interrupted by the arrival of brusque German traveller Jorg (Pemberton), cosy Northern couple Kath and Les (Julie Hesmondhalgh and Mark Benton), brash Australian backpacker Shona (Jessica Gunning), and twatty Trustafarian Hugo (Jack Whitehall) to round out the cast of players. And it soon turns out there’s one more traveller in the Couchette, who’s already managed to sink down into a very deep sleep indeed… Fantastic turns from the group of star names that feature also fix audience expectation – Shearsmith, Pemberton, Benton, Hesmondhalgh, Gunning and Whitehall all play archetypes we feel we know, as they regularly show up in so much of British comedy, past and present. There’s the rude German traveller comedy stereotype, the British snob, the well-meaning working-class couple, a geezer-bird Aussie clutching a can of Carlsberg, and a middle-class posh prat. Expectations born from how these particular caricatures are usually used in comedy – “We’ve started World War 3!” is said during an argument between the German and British factions of the six – help to maintain the secret of the final act, and the slow subversion of their clichés unfolds and propels the plot. German Jorg enters the action with crude physical comedy – he farts, he spits, he even shits into a shoebox – and is labelled “ignorant” by Shearsmith’s Dr Maxwell, and a “pig” by Les. Les grumbles about “frog’s legs” while the train travels towards Bourg St. Maurice, marking himself as a xenophobic Brit type. Kath shows herself to be a long-suffering easy-going wife and mother, while Shona’s upfront crudity clashes with Hugo’s hopeless private-school-educated oik caricature. It’s upon the discovery of the dead body in bunk 9B that each type is then broken down. We see the truth and humanity of these people, partially distracting from where the plot is going, and informing deductions of what might have happened to the dead man – why he’s been placed there by the programme’s writers, what they’re leading us to. From the beginning, Dr Maxwell controls the action. He’s the audience’s first point of contact, our protagonist. He closes the curtains on the view outside of the train in the first minute of the episode, stabilising the setting of the play. Unlike on a theatre stage, where the curtains open the action out to the audience, Dr Maxwell traps us into the set with him. He also acts as the only point of communication for Jorg, effectively isolating him from the other characters who don’t speak his language, just as we’re isolated from the German-speaking Jorg by the episode’s lack of subtitles. The doctor is a controlling force from the outset, and we’re given hints about who he really is in a different way to the other characters. His profession, and ready stash of medications, is suspicious, and Shearsmith’s considered portrayal brings associations of upper-class gentleman serial killers from history, or cut-glass accented British actors brought in to play cold killers in Hollywood cinema. Again, we feel we know who this character is and what he’s going to do, so the reveal in the Doctor’s closing moments solo speech – that the man in bunk 9B is his rival for an important interview, and that’s he’s killed him – is a satisfying payoff for those who’ve figured it out, a pat on the back for a viewer paying attention. But then taking the control away from Dr Maxwell – and, in turn, the audience – with the true reveal that Jorg is in fact rival Dr Meyer, and the murderer has killed the wrong man, makes La Couchette a really clever opening to the series, and a solid start to another run of surprises from Inside No. 9. Read more about Inside No. 9’s second series, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
