Inside No. 9 – Season 5 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Death Be Not Proud

Inside No 9 returns this week for another deliciously dark slice of drama, this time with Jenna Coleman arriving as supporting actress for this ensemble piece. With a nice twist at the end and a good injection of humour, this anthology series continues to impress with its latest episode.

The story begins with Beattie and Sam moving into their new property. They bagged a good deal too, managing to get 100 grand off the initial price thanks to a gruesome murder that took place years ago. Sam leaves for work and as he does, a picture smashes on the floor. That evening things quickly take a turn for the worst when appliances turn themselves on and a large crack forms across the wall.

In the morning, a man named David arrives, claiming to have previously lived in their apartment. His Mother Maureen passed away there and as we skip back in time, we’re given a montage of his time in the apartment, including his Mother dying and his friend Emily from his murder mystery class arriving and subsequently resulting in the two of them hitting it off.

Maureen returns from beyond the grave and tells him she doesn’t like Emily as she can’t be trusted. After a fight, David convinces her to stay and they have a child together. Only, before they do they get rid of Maureen’s body, which happens to be on ice in the bathroom.

Despite recycling her, David is visited by Maureen again who tries to convince him to drop baby John in a boiling pot of water. Thankfully, Emily arrives just in time to stop him and as he’s taken away by the police, we return to the present.

Maureen is back and as she visits David, she tells him to murder again. Only…it turns out she’s talking to Beattie, who plunges the knife in David’s stomach and kills him. As the episode closes out, Beattie kills Sam too, who lies dead in the bathtub, and switches the radio on, telling the two ghosts (David and Maureen) she’ll be back soon where the episode ends.

With another strong episode to its name, Inside No 9 continues to impress, weaving both humour and tension in equal doses throughout this story. There were some genuinely tense moments too, especially when David looked set to drop John in the pot of water. By contrast, some of the dry humour worked perfectly to offset this, leading to another big twist at the end.

Ironically, Inside No 9 feels more like Black Mirror than Black Mirror itself right now and it’s easy to see why. Sticking to its guns, this anthology knows exact how to craft its tight-knit stories and does so with a grounded flair and enthusiasm that few shows can match. Quite what next week’s chapter has in store for us remains to be seen but based on this showing, Inside No 9 may just prove to be one of the best shows of 2020.

Inside No. 9 is available to watch on the BBC. Feel free to click here and sign up now to check this show out!