Inside No 9, review: ‘The Referee’s a W***er’ is something of a classic

They’ve made no changes to the core team. The club’s management (Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith) is the same, and they’re keeping the formation that has been so successful for them in the last four series. So it is a delight that Inside No 9 (BBC2) is “coming home” to BBC2 and that they have kicked off their run of six episodes in excellent form, too: “The Referee’s a W***er” is something of a classic.

Funnily enough, given that it’s about football, we never see a ball being played, and the “action” takes place entirely in the match officials’ slightly claustrophobic and smelly changing room. It’s the final, pre-retirement match for referee Martin (David Morrissey, with an exceptional performance), and a make-or-break game for the teams in the Championship. United – hoping for a win to gain promotion to the lucrative Premier League – play Rovers, who have to win to avoid a financially ruinous relegation. The stakes could not be higher, as they say. The stoic, punctilious, and Northern ref Martin seems the perfect fit for the match.

Pre-match, the United team captain, Calvin Cooke (Dipo Ola) pops in for the usual pre-match meeting and to give the ref a retirement card. So far, so routine. It is then that we are hit with the most gob-smacking early shock since Shane Long nicked a goal in a record-breaking 7.69 seconds after kick-off (for Southampton against Watford at Vicarage Road, 23/4/2019). The dialogue (not the Long one, the Inside No 9 one) goes like this:

Ref: “So, big game! How are you feeling?”

Utd captain: “OK.”

Ref: “Can I kiss you?”

They do, too, with a tenderness rarely witnessed between top-ranking centre-forwards and referees, on or off the pitch. The ref softly declares his love for the man inside the United No 9 shirt (you see the joke there). This revelation about a romantic relationship is but the first of many complications that eventually succeed in wrecking Ref Martin’s valedictory game.

One linesman, Oggy (Pemberton), turns out to be corrupt, taking a bung from a gambling syndicate for giving the first (bogus) throw-in to Rovers, bang on 16 minutes in. That then leads to Rovers scoring and a furious Captain Cooke storming into the officials’ room and walloping the other linesman (an irritating fop played by Ralf Little). Ref Martin has no option but to give him a “straight red” card. Then, like a classic Robin van Persie volley, the emotionally betrayed Cooke shoots right back with some force: “Well, that’s the only straight thing about you, isn’t it? You’ve sucked my cock for the last time, Martin, you understand?”

When this bombshell is dropped in front of all the other match officials and, comically incongruous, the United mascot “Mitch” (the wonderful Steve Spiers swallowed up by a sort of giant Nookie Bear outfit), you just want the floor to open up and consume the entire stadium.

Trying to make amends, Martin contrives to award United a penalty, which has to be taken three times before they manage to score.

Then there’s a riot, the match is abandoned, and the press, the club management, and the police close in on the hapless gang. Martin, dignified and stoic even in such circumstances, remarks that he “did it for love”.

Only when he takes off his dressing gown and we see the huge “City ’til I die” mural tattooed across his entire back do we see that what Martin did was not for the love of Calvin, but for the love of City, who now overtake United and secure promotion. As Mitch says (and he should know, running around in an animal costume for a couple of hours every week): “You’d do anything for your club, wouldn’t you?” Too true. My own favourite “No 9” remains the 0-9 Leicester City win over Southampton (Chilwell, 10’; Tielemans, 39’; Perez, 19’, 39’, 57’; Vardy, 45’, 58’, 90’+4 pen; Maddison, 85’ – 25/10/19) but I won’t go on about that because I’d not want to start a riot.

Anyway, I’ve renewed my season ticket to see twin strikers Pemberton and Shearsmith play their own beautiful game with such elegance and precision every week.