This was, in essence, the Inside No. 9 version of a soap – literally a kitchen sink drama, taking place entirely in this house’s kitchen/dining room. It occurred to me that this might be a four or five week Coronation Street plot compressed down to 30 minutes, and it worked tremendously well – Steve Pemberton was the right choice to play earthy Trevor, Debbie Rush an excellent Julia (I have thought for a long time that Rush is better than Coronation Street – this is good evidence for that). They were ably backed up by Gaby French’s teenage Mia and Olly Hudson-Croker’s convincing Connor. This was a family that felt real, helped along by touches like Grandma’s Knickers – a game for which the rules are initially unclear, but then we work it out along the way; a realistic depiction not bogged down by exposition, and all the more satisfying for it.

Gone was the much-feted ‘twist’, replaced by a series of small but impactful reveals. We learn through subtle dialogue that Connor is their grandson but Mia their daughter; we intuit that Patrick must be some sort of alcoholic or drug addict; we discover that Trevor has been lying about his injury to save face for Patrick; and, most impactfully of all, we discover that both Julia and Trevor were involved in running down Patrick’s loan shark. This is, to a degree, classic Inside No.9 darkness – drug addiction, a broken family, murder – but softened by the fact that it is ultimately about a family’s love for each other, and the steps they will take to protect one another – Love’s Great Adventure.

So this, to me, is a story of the small, sometimes invisible sacrifices that people who love one another make – as violent as the running down of the loan shark, as homely as spending extra time to replicate a dress for your daughter (and as painfully realistic as trying to let your mum down gently when it’s not at all what you want). Listening to the Inside Inside No. 9 podcast¸ this episode was one of their favourites to make, and it’s easy to see why – a simple plot with well-realised characters and heart-breaking twists and turns. It’s the amazing strength of the format that we can spend an episode on the relatively low-stakes, low-horror world of a soap, but the programme is all the more valuable for it.