I have just finished watching a wonderful TV show called "The Inside" from 2005. There are only 13 episodes, and it was cancelled. We have a podcast called "Profiling Criminal Minds" - a meta discussion of the TV show, Criminal Minds. Between our analysis of Season 5 & 6, we discuss "The Inside" to put Season 6 into perspective. Yesterday, we finished creating the bonus 7-part mini-series that discusses "The Inside". It will begin to air in September alongside our weekly podcasts.
To get it out of my head, I decided to write this blog post - I do have to do other work completely divorced from this topic!
Everyone who is interested in issues of the long-term impact of child abuse should watch this series. It contains a brilliant character study of the main character - a woman who is working in the FBI as a profiler in the Violent Crimes Unit in Las Angeles. She was kidnapped at age 10, and escaped her kidnapper 18 months later. Created by Tim Minear and Howard Gordon, I was stunned by its focus and its character creations. Not that I should have been surprised given the creators. My podcast co-host had been raving about this show for ages, and he was right.
I won't go into details, but it rang true to me. There were many difficult moments in the episodes as Rebecca's story and life unfolds. As a survivor I recognized, empathized with and had some difficult moments with the content. You can hear my reactions if you wish to listen to the podcast later this year. It certainly made me have more than a few mini-reflections on my past - even though the situations (with which readers of the blog are familiar) were different. Even my co-host had moments of reflection on his past - and that almost never happens.
Kudos to Minear and Gordon and all the writers, directors, actors etc. on the show.
And many thanks to Chris from England for putting this playlist together, I assume that he taped them from ITV4 mainly. It is the only way to get them - they aren't available on DVD. Just a note: Episodes 4 and 5 are out of order on the Youtube playlist - you should watch Pre-filer before you watch Loneliest Number.
And here is the link for the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG5YX8k3vkx5nb9R2ljthjsmq79JRFYMx
I should note that this is a very dark television show, as I say in the first podcast. I am not surprised that it was cancelled. It is harder to watch than anything else on the subject. It handles difficult issues with a tightness of control that is seldom seen in television. I have no idea how we are going to go back to Criminal Minds after watching this - but we will - we committed ourselves to talk about the entire show, and we will.
