Eschewing the trademark wretched and macabre, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton open their fourth season of "Inside Number 9" with something a little different. "Zanzibar" is part Ealing farce and part Shakespearean comedy of errors; room swapping and rhyming couplets - but with added jokes about Golden Showers.
Does it work? Not entirely, but enough finds the mark to make this one worthy of your time.
Reteaming with Stephen Kerr, who directed all of the first season of "Inside Number 9", "Zanzibar" introduces us the residents of the 9th floor of the Zanzibar hotel. These include Prince Rico (Rory Kinnear) heir apparent of an undisclosed country who is there with his security guard and confidant Henry (Shearsmith) who is incidentally planning to murder him. Gus (also Rory Kinnear) brings his girlfriend Amber (Hattie Morahan) to the hotel to try and rescue their struggling relationship with one last grand gesture. Meanwhile, Mr Green (Bill Paterson) wants some peace to commit suicide whilst lamenting the decision to put his twin sons up for adoption many years previously . . . you can already see where this is going.
Key cards fail and accommodation is swapped. Room service, of all kinds, is requested and delivered and the misunderstandings run wild. The farce aspect of the show works extremely well. Layered in ideas pay off down the line and clever uses of synonyms keep the plot running and the laughs coming.
The rhyming couplets idea is less successful. For each one that ends in a witty pairing, there are several that miss, somewhat so there are times when I wondered if they'd abandoned the idea. Also, Steve Pemberton's character Robert, on holiday with his Amnesiac mother (Marcia Warren), will feel somewhat familiar to long term fans of the show and his previous work.
But the positives far outweigh the negatives and the prospects for season four are looking good.