That description alone – Sheila and Ken from No. 8 – conjures up a lot to be happening with. Add within the quilted bodywarmers, Tupperware, and point out of “the winter e-newsletter” and these are individuals we’ve all met – and know to keep away from. “Boo to a Goose” was exceptional for its record-breakingly swift institution of character, however I swear that we realized every little thing we would have liked to find out about Sheila simply from the best way Dorothy Atkinson pressed that doorbell. Excellent casting.
The judgement, because it so usually does in middle-class suburban enclaves, had begun earlier than the neighbours had even met. Val and Damon’s backyard gnomes and takeaway luggage didn’t cross muster with Sheila and Ken, so it was a comparatively quick hop from tutting over their recycling habits to suspecting Damon of – what else – having murdered Val and chopped her up within the bathtub.
We too have been led to suspect Damon, and to get pleasure from a shiver from our escalating suspicion. The restricted setting labored wonders, with No. 8’s entrance bed room and balcony providing one other depth to the in any other case flat picture. When it comes to route and modifying, it was a technical triumph and, like one of the best of those tales, a masterclass in what to go away out.
From the noises-off argument, to the heavy suitcases, the night-time driving, and the voicemail message that might have been an tried alibi as a lot as the true factor, the episode performed with the concept that Damon was the killer all the best way to the 22-minute mark. Then, missing-Val breezed dwelling proper as rain, having spent the previous week together with her sister. By that time although, the equipment was already in movement for her homicide, not by husband Damon however by inept, comical, dog-loving neighbour Larry.
In his unplanned assault on Val – wrongly believing that she’d poisoned his canine Popcorn and dumped the physique in a wheelie bin – Larry did use a brick. That was simply one in every of a number of satisfyingly seeded pay-offs within the episode. Sheila’s horrible driving was one other, when it was revealed that she had unintentionally reversed over Popcorn (whose existence we have been neatly reminded of at common intervals) after which callously dumped his physique in Val and Damon’s bin. Larry killed Val, Damon was arrested for it, however because of the doorbell footage, the reality will out.
All of which was advised within the ensuing Netflix true crime parody that capped a working gag about Michael Ball. Excellent plotting. Excellent pay-offs. And excellent – if slight – satire, each on the small-minded, suburban snobbery of the terminally humourless Sheila and Ken, and on our voyeuristic fascination with true crime.
