SERIES REVIEW: Inside (S1)

Walter Presents has been really busy these past few weeks (when isn’t it?), and one of its latest roster additions has been French murder mystery drama Inside (À L’intérieur).

The six-episode series (originally aired in France in 2018) tells the story of a young police lieutenant trying to solve her first, gruesome case – a dead female patient in a psychiatric hospital with her heart cut out.

Angèle Maury (Noémie Schmidt) sets out to find the killer of Ana Galmont (Fleur Geffrier) in a private psychiatric hospital, and this presents a bit of a problem – the patients are unreliable due to their illnesses and the secrets they harbour. Angèle becomes obsessed with the case to the detriment of her relationship with her fiancé and mother, and she becomes attached to the inhabitants of the hospital. But her relationship with the patients also add another layer of potential misdirection and even more unreliable leads.

However, Angèle’s relationships with the patients also give the series real warmth and intimacy. You find yourself empathising with some of them and affected emotionally when they become involved in the case, for better or worse. I also felt that filming most of the series in the hospital added to a claustrophobic atmosphere of the series.

But setting a drama over six hours in one location can make a viewer feel claustrophobic too. I felt like I saw the same things happening far too often and at times Inside dragged for me. The performances were fine and Angèle’s descent into obsession as she starts to lose parts of her life because of the case is genuinely interesting. Inside, though, is full of standard tropes – the break up of a relationship because a case consumes them, falling for a suspect, being removed from a case by being too personally involved… these are fine if you are adding something new to the story but it’s a pretty standard fare.

At just six episodes Inside fits the bill when it comes to an easy, binge-able series, and some of the twists and turns (there are many) keep you guessing till the end. Just don’t go expecting it to reinvent any wheels.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Wayne Edge

Inside streams on All4 via Walter Presents in the UK