Tom & Gerri
| "Tom & Gerri" | |
|---|---|
| Inside No. 9 episode | |
 |
|
| Episode no. |
Series 1 Episode 3 |
| Directed by | David Kerr |
| Written by |
Steve Pemberton Reece Shearsmith |
| Produced by | Adam Tandy |
| Original air date | 19 February 2014 |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
 "D-Day Doris"Tom and Gerri talk about Gerri's acting |
|
|
"Migg's reward" Migg returns Tom's wallet |
"Tom & Gerri" is the third episode of British dark comedy anthology series Inside No. 9. It premiered on BBC2 on 19 February 2014. The episode was based on a play that Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith had written while living together prior to the development of their series The League of Gentlemen. While the play had originally been around two hours in length, the episode was only half an hour. "Tom & Gerri" follows a difficult period in the life of Tom (Shearsmith), a primary school teacher and aspiring writer, and his partner Gerri (Gemma Arterton), a struggling actress, after Tom invites the homeless Migg (Pemberton) into his home. Conleth Hill stars as Stevie, a man worried about the mental health of his friend Tom. The entire episode takes place inside Tom's flat.
Reviewers generally agreed that "Tom & Gerri" was significantly darker but less funny than previous episodes of Inside No. 9. Nonetheless, the response to the episode as a whole was very positive. Critics disagreed about the presentation of Tom's mental illness in the episode, with one journalist suggesting that the episode's ending "set back public awareness of mental health at least half an hour", but another saying that the story presented "a fine – if cartoonish – take on mental illness".
Writers Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, who had previously worked together on The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville, took inspiration for Inside No. 9 from "David and Maureen", episode 4 of the first series of Psychoville. This episode, in turn, was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. "David and Maureen" took place entirely in a single room, and was filmed in only two shots. At the same time, the concept of Inside No. 9 was a "reaction" to Psychoville, with Shearsmith saying that "We'd been so involved with labyrinthine over-arcing, we thought it would be nice to do six different stories with a complete new house of people each week. That's appealing, because as a viewer you might not like this story, but you've got a different one next week." As an anthology series with horror themes, Inside No. 9 also pays homage to Tales of the Unexpected, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
...
Wikipedia