Inside Man: Episode 3

 "Much be so much easier."

"What must?"

"Not believing in Hell."

This is the hardest decision I've had to make for a quote for ages. That says a lot. 

There's a lot of quotable, philosophical dialogue here. But it all emerges from the characters. Harry's police interview is so very cringe. But it exposes Harry. He's a bad man, and a good man. He acted with dselfish desperation towards Edgar, and did not, as he tried to claim, protect him. Yet Edgar watched, and thus funds, child porn. And, let's face it, that suicide note wasa spiteful act of vindictiveness aimed, unknowingly yet culpably, at an innocent teenage boy.

Beth is interrogated, too, on the ethics of her trade as a voyeuristically morbid crime journalist by hardened criminal Morag- who adopts the moral high ground. And Grieff, faced with an actual execution date, reacts not with dignity but with an unexpected desperation. He wants to live, after all. And, despite the fact he mutilated his wife's corpse, apparently the retrieval of her head will explain things. Hmm.

This is building up for a huge finale, with Janice's very justifuable mind games and the horrifying cliffhanger, with Ben locked in the cellar with Janice as the carbon monoxide slowly kills them... and it was Harry who did this, so his wife would not. Because he loves hisfamily so much that he would take their place in Hell. That he would actually download child porn- an evl act in itself, funding more child abuse- to save his son.

This is deep, clever, fascinating. And memory sticks are indestructible, right?

I May Destroy You: Would You Like to Know the Sex?

 "And now I have the outward appearance of a man, but there within my pants lies a vagina."

This is a bloody clever penultimate episode. Obviously it relates to the ending where Bella has flashbacks of the assault, and also to Terri (yay for her job!) and her new "boyfriend", whose gender is not as it may appear. It also, of course, refers to the author who has inspiured Bella to finish her novel, yet she turns out to be... Zain.

Yet there's so much going on here, from Bella losing the contract with her publisher and suddenly being in debt to them to Kwame's nice relationship going slow with his nice boyfriend, contrasting with the unpleasant result of this attempted apology to the woman he slept with. We also see that poor Ben feels lonely. And that the publisher whom Bella so admired, and once compared to Obama, turns out to be shallow and ruthless. Hopefully she'll show them all.

In confronting Zain, and letting her help her, Bella is dealing with one of her demons. The perpetrator is not being punished judicially but, as dialogue elsewhere says, that often doesn't happen. Will she now confront and control the original assault itself? This is deep, powerful, extraordinary stuff.

I May Destroy You: Happy Animals

 "It's declined. Can I get a selfie, please?"

As ever, this is a thought-provoking episode with lots to unpick, centred around Terri's birthday party and the fact that Bella, still needing to earn a living despite the rapes, is broke.

Bella's treatment by the publishing boss she'd previously idolised is horribly, patronisingly casual: an advance isn't forthcoming. And she's to fulfil the contract, not write things about rape. All of which follows from humiliation in the supermarket.

We also see Kwame beginning to process what has happened to him, telling Terri about it. And we get some awkwardly racialised stuff about climate change. The pastor spouts absurd climate sceptic conspiracy theories bases on colonialism and white exploitation of resources which is, on the face of it, absurd and harmful..,. but then Theo confesses she got paid more for introducing Bella as an influencer because she's a "person of colour". Yet Theo is honest, and very frank about the ethical problems. She very much seems a decent person... but, as Terri mentions, the sins of the past have yet to be acknowledged. There are no easy answers here.

Terri and Bella pronounce their undying, and rather drunken, love for each other at the party... but an earlier conversation with an aggrieved Simon indicates that Terri may have more to do with the abandonment of Arabella to her eventual rape that night than previously thought. The plot thickens. Again, this is good, ethically nuanced, uncomfortable yet sublime telly.

I May Destroy You: It Just Came Up

 "Rapebusters!"

This is an incredible bit of telly, genuinely groundbreaking and meaningful. It's taken a few episodes for I Will Destroy You to introduce and flesh out its characters and themes, but now we are properly into a sublimely constructed dramatic exploration of sex, consent, and all those nuances of behaviour, orf attitudes to sexual assault, of what we may or may not define as rape.

Bella goes through the wringer here. Still under pressure to write her new novel- life, and work, must go on- Bella soon learns that a DNA sample has been taken and a suspect arrested, which seems wonderful. Yet it also means the DNA of consensual partners must be taken, which means Biagio. Ad this seemingly caring and decent man starts to blame her for not being careful about her drinking rather than blaming, you know, the rapist that actually raped her. Wanker. It's a powerfully written and devastating scene.

Yet she gets a triumph, of sorts. Learning that what zain did- craftily removing the condom during sex- is rape both morally and legally, Bella plays on his mind for a bit before dramatically, and publically, outing him at the ens, in a victorious moment.

For Kwame, though, there are no such mixed experiences as his reporting of his own sexual assault to the police turns out, despite good intentions on behalf of the somewhat inarticulate policeman he speaks to, to be a humiliating embarrassment.The law seems not to be well-aligned with casual gay sex.

There's a lot to think about here. This is superb, serious drama.