Inside Man

A prisoner on death row works with a British journalist, the ultimate mission is to discover a missing teacher.

This is a hugely original, imaginative drama, it serves to ask the question, what lengths with a normal, everyday, caring person go to to protect someone that they loved.

If you're a fan of writer Stephen Moffat, as I am, you'll know he's capable of writing some incredible stuff, Sherlock and Doctor Who, you'll also know he's capable of writing some trash ......Sherlock and Doctor Who for example. This is a mix of both, some elements are amazing, some are quite poor.

If you're prepared to accept that reality is abandoned early on in episode one, you may just enjoy this, Part four is insane, it's wild and over the top, I loved it.

David Tennant is awesome (when isn't he,) Stanley Tucci was just phenomenal. The acting was perhaps the best thing about it, the two were captivating, but everyone played their part.

It's full of holes, so many times you'll be scratching your head, wondering what's going on. How thick were those walls??

7/10.

I decided to watch this despite mixed reviews because I love Stanley Tucci. As per usual, Stanley does a great job especially given the writing he had to work with. Tucci and the other death row inmate are fantastic together and it would be a much more interesting show if it was just based on them solving cases. Instead there is a horrible second story involving David Tennant. This is where the show goes off the rails. Tennant's character makes the worst decisions imaginable. I caught myself asking why countless times just during the first episode. It makes the show so unrealistic that it's practically unwatchable. Normally I see Tennant in great roles and I have no idea why he decided to take this part. He does a solid job but his character makes such poor decisions that I don't think any human would make regardless of their level of intelligence that it makes his part of the story very hard to watch. I've seen this in a couple other reviews but if you can throw all reality out the window while watching this, you'll probably enjoy it especially if you're a fan of Tucci or Tennant. If you prefer more realistic writing and decision making by the characters, this might be a hard watch for you. Essentially if you desperately need something to watch, give this a try but there are countless other shows that I would recommend before this one.

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.

My title says it all. Two of my pet plot peeves are stupidity (the characters do something stupid to move the plot forward) and contrivance (circumstances beyond credibility to move the plot forward). So masterful in so many ways, it is a shame that this plot seems written by a drunk amateur shouting out random ideas ("hey, and then this could happen!...").

The best bit was Stanley Tucci's and Atkin Estimond's neo-Sherlock/Watson rendition. Great character concept, actor pairing, and portrayal. The only downside (again) was the fairly contrived scenarios they were challenged to solve. But I could watch them banter all day.

I would reboot the series around Tucci and Estimond and hire a professional writer to focus on plot structure and you would have winner to rival "Sherlock" and "Elementary".

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.