That's what I was thinking. But then you have to suspend even more disbelief in Tamara Drewe where she chases after Roger Allam

“Black pudding’s very black today, mother”


He always seems really nice in interviews and in his 'history of horror' documentaries.

I think that detail of the changing name was a hint that it was imaginary. It was as if Tom had changed his mind about the details of the delusion.

I definitely think the fact she later said they had changed the name back to land girl lucy was a hint something was up.

As if in real life she had the part in land girl lucy, In his confused state it changed, Then when he though he was ok it went back

You rotten sods. I didn't think it was as good as the first two but I'll have to watch it all over again now

All these episodes have been worth at least two viewings!

As with Psychoville, this really deserves better ratings. People would watch it if they knew how good it was going to be. The fact is, they're not expecting there to be anything decent on BBC2 at 10pm (it's not often there is these days!).

I don't know what these 'insane' theories are, but you'd think that he'd be happy that people liked it for whatever reason.
He seems miserable that people didn't enjoy it in the right way for the right reasons or something.

Usually writers or artists say that it doesn't matter what the real explanation for something is and that it only matters what the individual takes from it even if they come to their own conclusions.
It appears that there's no pleasing some people. If people thought that it was good then I don't see why he seems to be in such a mood that people didn't enjoy it in the 'right' way.

What do you mean 'you'd think he'd be happy'? All he wrote was 'by all means run with it!'. He sounds quite happy about people having theories. He can be grumpy about stuff, but he seems very happy about responses to No 9, and there's nothing negative in the Tweets you quote there.

Agree with this, And also twitter only allows you to type a certain amount of letters so things can sometimes look harsher than they would written more accurately

He seems happy that people are letting the show stretch their minds. And the last tweet reads as a jokey comment

I didn't mean to imply RS was being grumpy with folk by posting those tweets. As mentioned he's mainly delighted with the response to the programme which appears to better than expected.

I thought the first one was interesting considering all the theories being put forward in this thread; the second surprised me and was posted really for info as I think we're all expecting a twist at the end of each episode now whilst the third was simply letting folk know RS wasn't in next weeks programme.

I don't think the comments were aimed at you, But at the poster who read them as negative

Do you think he was referring to this thread or have there been some insane theories on Twitter?

I don't understand how he can say that they didn't set out to write a twist in the previous episode. because obviously they did.

I personally wouldn't expect a twist at the end of every episode because I wouldn't necessarily call the ending of episode two a twist really. Maybe a surprise, but not really a twist.

I agree, thanks. I thought they were maybe being misinterpreted though. The perils of the written word strike again!


I expect he'd have primarily meant twitter but I'd imagine any media with feedback would be similar.

They've certainly all had twists so far but looks like there are others to come that don't. Might have been better to intersperse them better rather than have a block of those with twists to start with implying that they all do. Could lead to disappointment with the first non twist episode when you've been sitting trying to work out what it'll be only to find there is none. I'm sure some people would have said that the twist was there was no twist though!

Perhaps I did misinterpret them. However the first tweet did come across as somewhat condescending.
Recently there have been comments made by some writers of television shows which have come across as quite sneery to 'fans' of those shows even when the viewers have been quite nice about their shows. So perhaps I jumped to conclusions a bit.

There does seem to be something in those tweets though that makes it sound as though he's slightly frustrated that people enjoyed these shows for what he believes to be the wrong reasons.
For example if people enjoyed the episodes for the twists at the end, well then that's just what they happened to enjoy. He does seem to be a bit annoyed by this and I don't really understand why.

Anyway, maybe I might be seen to be a bit grumpy and I shouldn't be too surprised if anyone assumed that I was.

Well I'd say that he has interspersed them so far as episode 1 had a twist, episode 2 not really, and episode 3 did.

Even episode 1 wasn't really a twist, it was more of a revelation.
I would hope for some kind of revelation at the end of these types of stories. But it wouldn't mean that I'd expect some kind of story twist.

Reading it again I can see what you mean. I think it's the kind of line you can say out loud in different ways and get different meanings each time.

Again I appreciate where you're coming from but hope he's not. I haven't been following him long enough to fully know his style. I suppose with the creative mind you never know what to expect at times!


I disagree this time! I thought episode 2's ending was a definite twist.

I like the honest responses to what is standard internet behaviour. The amount of over analysis that goes on is ridiculous, as perfectly highlighted not too many posts above.

The ending of Ep 1 was a definite twist, as you found out one character was actually someone else pretending to be him. Unless you want to call every twist 'a revelation'. For me a twist is something that makes you rethink what's happened so far, and the end of Ep 1 cast everything that had happened before on a new light. In fact, you really had to rewatch the whole episode to notice all the 'well-seeded' lines.

Would you? I suppose it was in a way in that the Kayvan Novak character suddenly reveals himself to be somebody different. But I wouldn't say that was a strong twist in terms of the story.
A real twist would be something like the house belonged to the burglars all along and the Denis Lawson character and his girlfriend were the trespassers.

That was a really crap example I know but I'm thinking in terms of something being a real twist in the story and not just a sudden reveal, as there wasn't much story backdrop to the cleaning guy. He was just an extra character of which we knew practically nothing about.
What I mean is that I wasn't particularly surprised that the cleaning guy was really an assassin, as he could have been anybody.

Yes I'd say that episode one was definitely a twist.

Programme makers should love the fact that people who liked their show analyse what they've seen, as it's better to be talked about than ignored.

I never understand why people get irked at 'over' analysis. This is a discussion forum and I would have thought that programme makers would prefer people talking about their show than not.
That people talk a lot about a show is surely a good sign that people were engaged with it.

I'd be more worried if nobody was talking about a show.

I don't think that there has been anything particularly wrong with the analysis of the latest episode in this thread. To wonder what was hallucinated or what wasn't is not really what I'd call over-analysis. It's just people playing with ideas. That's a good thing I would have thought.

Ep 2 wasn't a twist, really. More like a surprising ending. We found out the mute wasn't really a mute, but his character hadn't been long introduced, so it wasn't a major reversal of what we thought we knew. The plot was pretty straightforward.

I'd say it's like the difference between the endings of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. People talked about the latter having a twist, but it was more like a bit of a surprise.

How can people possibly discuss programmes like these on something as intellectually strangling as Twitter? You only have to read the comments on here to realise that it's ridiculous even to try.

I can understand why he might be annoyed at the focus on the twists, as it implies that the rest of the show is just building up towards this twist. It works better when the audience let their guard down, such as in the first episode where you didn't know there was going to be a twist.

I do like this series though; you can imagine the stories being done as plays. We don't have enough theatre on TV.