4.4 To Have And To Hold We should have seen it coming. After all, this unsettling story announced its game two minutes in. “The picture on the box bears no resemblance to the actual jigsaw,” explained Adrian, a middle-aged man seated at his kitchen table, snapping little cardboard pieces into place. The clue was there: what you see is very much not what you get. Not with Adrian, and not with this episode. What we saw, until eighteen and a half minutes in, was a well-acted, poignant and funny drama about a brittle relationship sucked dry of passion. Harriet (Nicola Walker) and Adrian (Steve Pemberton) were twenty years in to a floundering marriage. They’d wanted kids but not had them, she’d had a fling with a colleague and now Adrian didn’t trust her, they were deeply in debt and shuffling through an extended sexual dry patch. Pemberton’s character, it turned out, wasn’t the most boring man in the world; he was a monster. Specifically, he was one of those ‘seemed like a nice, quiet fella’ monsters who manage to conceal their monstrosity and lead double lives. Until Adrian removed that false wall, there was no reason to believe he was anything other than a depressed, impotent cuckold. Pemberton played him with restraint and pathos, hiding any hint to his true nature behind a façade of weary bitterness. Nicola Walker’s performance as Harry was characteristically excellent. An actor fluent in funny-sad, this was a peach of a part for her. The Nurse Honeypot scene was excruciating to watch in all the right ways. The comedy of Harry’s determined seduction of a reluctant husband—her eyes flashing with unconvincing promise (“How’s that? Is that nice?”) as she massaged his thighs and worked her greasy way up to what became increasingly clear was a non-existent hard-on—would have been entertainment enough. Inside No. 9, though, never stops at just ‘enough’. It goes further, adding another layer and another, often nasty, surprise. As ever this series, Christian Henson’s score played a crucial role. Initially, it was to there wrong-foot us. An elegant string and piano motif announced a relationship drama. It led us into what promised to be a tragicomic study of the foibles and resentments accrued over the course of a long marriage. That simple motif started to twist as Adrian boiled the kettle and made his preparations to open the locked door. Then the music disappeared, returning with a new, ominous bassline that accompanied the real story. Any Inside No. 9 fans impatient with the show’s late expansion into romance and happy endings have been served well in this David Kerr-directed story. (“You’re working in the dark to some extent. Quite a challenge.” Indeed.) It was dark as pitch and it’ll take a while for its uncomfortable aftertaste to fade. Read Louisa’s review of the previous episode, Once Removed, here.
