A troubled detective investigating a missing child might sound rather familiar to fans of crime drama, but of course, nothing is exactly how it seems when you’re Inside No. 9.
Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s latest short story enlists the acting talent of Academy Award nominee Sophie Okonedo, who is coming off roles in Kenneth Branagh’s Death on the Nile and Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time.
Here she plays the lead as self-destructive cop Katrina – the so-called Nine Lives Kat of the title – with the writing duo taking supporting roles as colleagues on the force.
As we’ve come to expect from Inside No. 9, this episode has yet another bombshell twist ending, which you can find all the details of below. Spoiler alert!
Inside No. 9: Call Me Kat ending explained
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At first glance, Nine Lives Kat has all the makings of a fairly generic detective story, complete with a tortured, hard-nosed protagonist and a case that hits close to home.
Things take a turn for the unexpected about midway through, when it is revealed that Ezra, the colleague who keeps appearing in her home unannounced, is actually someone else entirely.
In a crushing monologue, he announces himself to be a writer – and more specifically, her creator – while she is merely a thinly characterised potential lead in a story he is exploring.
Kat’s cliché behaviour up until this point is representative of Ezra’s lack of interest in her, which has resulted in an empty apartment and a stock daughter who has neither a name nor a face.
Ezra’s role as writer is hinted at earlier in the episode, when in a discussion of suspects in a missing person’s case, he tells Kat that he’s “still in the process of fleshing out their stories”.
The natural assumption is that he means this in the sense of more police work needing to be done, but in fact, he means quite literally that he hasn’t created narratives for those side characters.
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He explains that he puts his notes for her would-be starring novel, titled Nine Lives Kat, in the bottom drawer of his desk, and digs them out occasionally to have another crack at nailing the story – but admits to her that he is finally giving up.
After relegating her to the rejection pile, we get an insight into Ezra’s life in the “real world”, where he lives with wife Philippa and stepson Ash in the same home he’d once imagined for Kat.
But again, things are not as they seem.
The couple are initially thrown into panic when it appears that their son has been abducted, with Ezra secretly suspecting that the culprit could somehow be Kat brought to life.
Indeed, she later confronts him in his kitchen, threatening to frame him for the child’s disappearance unless he writes her a compelling series of stories, leaving him little choice but to accept her demands.
Things plunge further into chaos as Kat “kills” the successful Barnabas Bull character that had been living in Ezra’s head as well as embarking on a fling with his wife, until it becomes clear that this reality is just as artificial as that which came before.
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Ezra himself is a fictional character created by novelist Matilda Gordon, who had previously introduced herself to Ezra as his Family Liaison Officer – in a similar way to how he had engaged Kat earlier in the guise of her colleague.
She explains that she struggles to write a satisfying ending (hence why the previous scene devolved into utter nonsense) and laments that her modern day Frankenstein story has morphed into a Stephen King-esque meta tale.
The iconic horror author is known for creating characters with certain things in common with himself, often fellow writers, with examples being found in the likes of IT, Misery and The Shining.
The episode ends with Ezra getting a taste of his own medicine, as Matilda concludes she too needs to relegate him to the bottom drawer for a time, while she works out a better way to cap off his story – he does at least have the hope of resolution in the future, which is more than he afforded Kat.
Inside No. 9 continues on BBC Two at 10pm on Wednesday 18th May 2022. Check out more of our Comedy coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what’s on tonight.
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