Inside No 9, series 6 episode 2, review: poking fun at Game of Thrones's moaning fanboys
Game of Thrones fans, look away now. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton think you’re a bunch of sociopathic man-children with an unhealthy investment in the truth of Jon Snow’s parentage and the secrets of the Flame of Aurora.
Actually, the Flame of Aurora was a Shearsmith/Pemberton creation. It had served as a major plot point in Ninth Circle, a hit fantasy series which had ended on a disappointing note and for which its writer, Spencer Maguire (Pemberton), had been upbraided by obsessive fanboys. They demanded his head on a spike – figuratively and potentially literally.
Inside No 9 (BBC Two) typically takes place in a sort of liminal funhouse: a world slightly out of phase with our own. But with the latest episode, Simon Says, Shearsmith and Pemberton have placed their satire slap-bang in the middle of recent historical events – specifically the huge backlash against the final season of Game of Thrones (the episode was surely written before the Line of Duty brouhaha, but was pleasingly timely).
The fandango that unfolded was a delight. As the preening Maguire, Pemberton captured both the vanity and self-loathing of an ego-fuelled author who had come to hate their most beloved work. And Shearsmith was gleefully creepy as podcaster and uber-fan, Simon Smethurst.
No simpleton, Shearsmith's Simon was devious as well as obsessive. He had tricked Maguire into thinking the writer had killed another Ninth Circle devotee, Gavin (Nick Mohammed), in a boozy altercation at a nightclub. Believing Simon had leverage over him, Maguire agreed to revisit the final series of the Ninth Circle. Unaware of the blackmail, Maguire’s agent (Lindsay Duncan) was overjoyed he was returning to his biggest hit – as was the American network bankrolling the endeavour.
Was this on-the-nose social commentary or merely nerd bashing? It was hard to say. Shearsmith and Pemberton clearly take a dim view of people developing an obsession with a favourite TV show to the exclusion of all else. And yet their pastiche of George RR Martin obviously came from a place of fondness. You can bet they were as hooked on the fate of the Night King as the rest of us.
The big twist was that Gavin wasn’t dead. But when Simon pretended to bump off his sidekick a second time in order to convince Maguire of his acting abilities (he was angling for a starring role in the rebooted season) the writer snapped and killed them both. He then used Gavin’s alternative Ninth Circle script to successfully reboot the franchise.
Ultimately, Maguire embraced the toxicity of fandom and gave the public exactly what it craved. Viewers didn’t want to be challenged or surprised. They wished merely to be pandered to. It was a deliciously dark conclusion, mixing violence, parody and enough acid-bath cynicism to inflict third-degree burns on a dragon. If only the Games of Thrones ending had been half as good.
