Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Annette Badland, Elin Owen, Charlie Baron, Rosie Ekenna, William Newton.
We are continually told to cherish our children, they are after all, our future, the ones who will inherit our mess, the ones who will pay the price for our folly, our ignorance, and mismanagement.
In the world of the macabre and chilling, children though are perhaps the more gruesome of observers in the game of life, ghoulish in the spitefulness, morbid in their fascination of what makes their adult counterparts tick; it is no wonder that some of the finest horror films have had children, or the childlike, at the very heart of their narrative.
Horror and the horrid need not go overboard, it only requires a small degree of separation to twist the mind of the impressionable to reveal the latency of any deathly, gruesome act that has been brewing on their mind, and this is superbly captured by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton as they take their captivating Inside No. 9 series out to the classroom and into the nest of those who can get away with murder.
Mr King is an episode that throws chaos into the already chilling scenery, not so much Children of the Corn, but maybe inhabiting a small village in which the damned just don’t realise how the world really works.
The genius of the episode comes from the subtly of its twist, the shock value that comes before in the accusation of one of the teacher’s pupils who alleges indiscretion and a possible paedophilic encounter, is designed to numb and bring sympathy to the plight of the children in the rural Wales school, and yet it is in the 180 degrees turn that the true sense of horror sheds its disturbing light.
It takes bravery to write a piece such as Mr King, especially in the climate of charge, complaint, and denunciation that the merest whisper can bring down Heaven and Hell upon the one facing the allegation; and yet between the two actors, alongside the ever-impressive Annette Badland, and the group of children brought into the episode, bring a moment of clarity to the peace which acts in a similar way to that faced the innocents on trial in Salem, prosecution by claim, judgement at the hands of a non-elected committee; and one that dispenses a peculiar and novel retribution.
Inside No. 9 pushes the boundaries of where comedy can, and must, open the crypt of what is deemed acceptable, an episode that beautifully turns the knife and exposes the wound on how we see the environment and how we have pushed all the impetuous on those who quite rightfully observe that the older generations, all of them, are truly the ones who are wicked and deserve to be punished.
Ian D. Hall