Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
“Everyone is a murderer. You just have to meet the right person,” says Jefferson Grieff.
He would know. He’s on death row for murdering his wife.
He didn’t want to murder her, and he certainly never thought he had the capacity to. But according to him, that’s no excuse. So, he’s pled guilty, he’s accepted his punishment, and he has nothing left to say on the matter. Because according to him, he’s a “boring” murderer.
Beth Davenport doesn’t agree. The investigative journalist has discovered that while Grieff isn’t interested in changing his own fate, he is interested in helping others. And that’s hardly boring.
See, as a former criminologist, Grieff knows a thing or two about solving crimes. And he’s running a detective agency of sorts out of prison. But he has a very important criterion that must be met before he’ll take on any case: Its solving must have moral value.
It’s not to make atonement for his sins: Grieff says that won’t happen until the state ends his life. It’s simply because he wants to do some good before his time is up.
Harry Watling isn’t the sort of person you’d expect to be capable of murder. In fact, he’s probably the last person you’d expect. He’s a vicar for the Church of England, beloved by those in his small community and generally just a pleasant fellow.
But what Grieff says is true: All it takes to turn an average person into a murderer is a good enough reason on a bad enough day.
Harry’s Sunday started much like any other. He led church service and shook the hands of his congregants afterwards. And then things took a turn he didn’t expect.
Edgar, a young man in Harry’s parish struggling with a porn addiction and depression, begs Harry to take a flash drive and hide it. The drive contains his pornography collection, he tells Harry, and his mother (whom he lives with) wants to destroy it.
Harry, noticing fresh self-harm cuts on Edgar’s wrists, reluctantly agrees to protect the young man. But he plans to get rid of the flash drive himself.
Unfortunately, Harry doesn’t throw it away because he forgets about it. And it might not have mattered if his son, Ben, hadn’t then found it and given it to his math tutor, Janice, to borrow.
Harry immediately apologizes when he realizes that Janice has opened a file on the drive. Ben, hoping to butter his dad up so he can attend a music festival, even tries to take the blame for the drive’s contents—claiming it (and the porn) is his and thus protecting his father’s reputation.
And maybe Janice wouldn’t have cared if it had just been porn. But what neither Harry nor Ben realizes is that the drive contains child pornography.
Harry tries to explain, and he tells Janice about Edgar. But he’s worried that if anyone else finds out the truth, the troubled young man will take his own life. And Janice fears that Harry is lying about Edgar to protect Ben.
Janice tries to leave, but Harry won’t let her. They get into a scuffle and Janice falls down the basement stairs. She’s OK, but Harry is terrified she’s going to report Ben to the police. He panics, and he locks Janice down there.
There’s no way Harry can let Janice go. At best, Harry will go to jail for assault and Edgar will go to prison for the rest of his life (which likely wouldn’t be long given his suicidal predisposition).
But people are going to notice that Janice is missing—people like Beth Davenport.
Janice had met Beth shortly before Beth traveled stateside to interview Grieff. And, knowing that Beth writes about violence against women, she managed to send the young reporter a blurred photo of Harry just before her tumble down the stairs.
Beth knows that Janice is in trouble. And it just so happens that she has access to the one man on the planet who might be able to save Janice.
But can Grieff identify who Harry is before he harms Janice?
Let’s talk about the theme of this series: how far someone is willing to go to protect themselves or someone they care about.
This whole ordeal started because Harry, a good and caring pastor, feared for Edgar’s life. He was willing to place the blame on himself if it meant that Edgar wouldn’t be convicted for having child pornography (we don’t see it on screen, but we hear about it). He rightly suspected that Edgar, who struggles with depression, would take his own life if it ever came out.
Harry doesn’t sympathize with Edgar’s sin. In fact, when Edgar tries to justify the viewing of any pornography since it’s just “looking,” Harry tells him that God still cares. But as odious as he finds Edgar’s wrongdoing, he still doesn’t want the young man to end his life because Harry believes in the healing power of God.
But even Harry has his limits. When the accusations of child pornography are shifted to his son (who is innocent), his actions become erratic. He knocks Janice down the stairs. He locks her up. He contemplates how to kill her and get away with it.
For Edgar, he was willing to go to prison. For Ben, he was willing to murder. But no matter what happens in the end, Harry’s gone too far. He can’t go back.
It makes for an interesting story. But if Inside Man were being tried in court, it’d be convicted of gratuitous violence, graphic sexual themes and harsh language.
There’s the gruesome murder of Grieff’s wife. Apparently, it was the brutality of how he murdered her (they still haven’t found her head) that landed him on death row. Another death-row inmate, Dillon, was convicted of murdering 15 women. (He also ate his mother’s feet after killing her.)
And then of course, we witness the violence against Janice.
The crazy part is that Harry didn’t really seem to know what he was doing. He wasn’t trying to hurt her, just stop her. But he was out of control and nearly killed her as a result. (And of course, without giving away spoilers, the violence continues in later episodes as Harry determines what he should do about Janice.)
A man takes his own life. People harm themselves. (Janice purposely cuts her arms so she can spread her blood all over Harry’s basement to ensure police find DNA evidence in case Harry decides to kill her.)
We hear that a man raped three women nearly 30 years ago. Janice and Beth first met because a man was harassing Beth on a train (when she rejected his initial advances, he stood so that his crotch was directly in front of her face), and Janice helped her escape.
Inside Man is a well-written and intriguing look at humanity: Would you be willing to sell your soul to save someone you loved? But most viewers probably won’t need to see how this plays out to know their answers.
A death-row inmate is recruited to find a woman’s would-be killer before he has the chance to murder her.
We hear a man killed 15 women (it’s implied he had sex with them first) and ate his mother’s feet after she was dead. He claims the 15th woman didn’t count since she actually died from an infection she received while being treated in a hospital for the injuries he inflicted. A man is warned not to trust two murderers on death row. A man on death row believes he deserves to be executed for murdering his wife. There are some jokes about death and the shortness of life on death row.
We hear a man was charged with raping three women 30 years ago but was acquitted. [Spoiler warning] When his wife learns he was guilty, she becomes so distraught that she begins seeing a therapist every time they have sex. And a woman at her husband’s office mistakenly pays “the rapist” instead of the therapist, resulting in her husband getting paid every time he and his wife have sex.
An adult man asks Harry, his pastor, to hide his porn collection from his mother. When the man tries to say it isn’t a sin, Harry refutes this, stating that God still cares about what he does. Later, Harry makes the shocking discovery that the pornography features children. A woman mistakenly believes it belongs to Harry’s son, Ben. And fearing the woman will report Ben to the police, Harry physically stops her—first tripping her, causing her to hit her head on the corner of a table and bleed. But then he accidentally knocks her down his basement stairs (she survives but is bleeding heavily).
The woman purposely cuts her arms to spread her blood all over Harry’s basement as DNA evidence in case Harry decides to kill her. (She also says she urinated everywhere.) Harry spots self-harm cuts on a man’s wrists and fears he may be suicidal.
A woman smacks her grown son twice for possessing child pornography (which she was trying to confiscate), but neglects to report his actions to the police or anyone else who might be able to help. Another woman arms herself with a hammer but doesn’t use it.
A man sexually harasses a woman on a train by positioning his crotch near her face. He’s arrested by police at the next stop for harassment.
We hear a vicar cancelled his family’s Wi-fi after catching his teenage son watching pornography. (We also learn his family didn’t attend church with him.) A married couple kisses. We hear some jokes about sex.
People lie. A reporter pushes a woman to do an interview even though the woman states she’s not interested. Later, a man accuses the same reporter of chasing “lurid” stories because she likes to feel superior to others. We hear a death-row inmate solves mysteries with “moral value” so he can do some good in the world before being executed. Another death-row inmate claims he was so crazy, his therapist left the profession. A woman helps her husband hide someone in their basement to prevent her from reporting their family to the police.
There are two uses of the f-word and one of the s-word. We also hear a couple uses each of “a–,” “b–tard,” the British expletive “bloody,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s and Christ’s names are also abused a few times. A woman says it’s strange for women to compliment each other’s bravery with the term “ballsy.”
We hear people singing at a church and later see congregants shaking hands with the vicar. One man says he is an atheist but still attends church with his wife, a believer. A woman wears a cross necklace.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
