Inside Man: Episode 1

 "Anyone can wind up in this place..."

One might say, in some ways, that there is much we might have expected from Steven Moffat in this, his long-awaited new drama.There's a character- Jefferson Grieff- who is superficially similar to Sherlock in how he solves crimes. Paul McGuigan directs. It's all very clever, with different plot strands interconnecting at various points. David Tennant star as Harry, our likeable vicar protagonist. Lydia West and Dolly Wells are well known for starring in work by Moffat and his mate RTD.over-complex.

Yet this is not, as no doubt some are saying, just Moffat doing his usual tropes. It is not, as no doubt some are saying, confusing and over-complex. Just pay attention. It's all there. And it's much more than a puzzle box, this is about something.

Harry is a good man, a husband, a father, a lynchpin of his community. So when his verger, with his overbearing (and violent) mother asks him to take from him a drive with "porn", he sees this as a trivial matter. And yet-this being the central premise- a good man can become a murderer, given the right circumstances.

We have a parallel in Jefferson, who seems to have murdered his wife and believes he deserves his upcoming execution. As various conversations hint, he was also a good man who made a wrong decision, and somehow became a murderer. He accepts his fate, and whiles away his time in Death Row solving crimes. Yet the Sherlocking is superficial. The point is that this is a man who has done something evil, though not an evil man. And he accepts the consequences with integrity. Not just death, but to be hated. He actively dissuades Beth from ewriting about him positively. His ideas of "moral worth" are fascinating.

Janice, too, is clever and highly principled, as we see in the opening train scene. And so the terrible misunderstanding is set up, where she finds the verger's child porn, believing it to belong to Harry's son. Harry panics, handles things badly... and Janice ends up locked in the cellar. This is brilliant writing, and acting.

And so we face the consequences. Harry's horrified wife. And the confrontation with Janice, who fully realises the only possible fate for her is to be murdered as Harry, though a good man, has no other way out. But she will not make it easy...

And Beth is on the case. This is superb stuff.