Following on from helming Doctor Who, Sherlock and 2020’s Dracula, Steven Moffat is back with his latest drama series, Inside Man.
The captivating series follows two seemingly unconnected stories as it entangles its characters in unexpected ways with a mystery that has a missing maths tutor at its heart.
With so many true-crime stories floating around on our screens lately, it’s no surprise that some viewers have been left asking whether Inside Man is based on a true story or if it’s a work of fiction.
Inside Man release date and plot preview
Inside Man arrived on the BBC in the UK back on September 26 and was followed by an international release on Netflix on October 31.
The four-episode series intertwines two enthralling stories, the first of which follows a friendly Vicar, Harry Watling, who lives a seemingly perfect life in a quiet English village until a series of bad decisions leave him very far up a creek with no paddle in sight.
While the other introduces us to Jefferson Grieff, an extraordinary prisoner on death row in the US, one who used to be a criminology professor who now helps to solve cases from behind bars.
When an unfortunate maths tutor ends up being kidnapped and trapped in a basement, the two seemingly opposing worlds collide.
Is Inside Man based on a true story?
No, Inside Man is not a true story. Instead, it is a purely fictional creation from writer Steven Moffat.
In the run-up to the series’ arrival, Moffat spoke to the RadioTimes about the inspirations behind Inside Man and its perplexing and overlapping mysteries.
As the writer explained, Inside Man is actually inspired by another fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, and wanting to come up with a character who wasn’t another copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth, ironic given how Moffat is famed for leading the Benedict Cumberbatch-starring Sherlock series.
“I was thinking of what kind of detectives we hadn’t had,” Moffat said. “Pretty much ever since [Arthur Conon] Doyle invented Sherlock Holmes, there has been no other kind of detective – they’re all rip-offs.”
“But [Grieff’s] particular area of insight is he knows that anyone can do it. He’s not supporting his worldview with the fairy tale that supports your worldview and mine, that there’s goodness and kindness and some of us just wouldn’t [commit murder]”
“He knows – he’s solving crimes from hell. He does believe that every human being is absolutely capable of the abominable – the advantage of the loss of everything he valued from his life is that he has the insight that strips away all the lies that sustain our illusion of security.”
How real prisoners are used to help solve cold cases
While the tale of Jefferson Grieff may be fictional, there are real-life instances of prisoners helping to solve cases from behind bars.
However, they don’t usually come in the form portrayed in Inside Man, nor Hannibal Lecter’s in Silence Of The Lambs.
First trialed in the US back in 2007, police forces in several states have created decks of playing cards to give to prison inmates that include details about real-world cold cases in the hopes of receiving new pieces of information.
Florida was the first state to implement the idea and as of 2021, it has been picked up by 18 US states and even law enforcement in New South Wales in Australia had taken up the idea.
According to reports, Florida has had an average of two to three solved cases per deck of 52 cards since the scheme was introduced.
In the Netherlands, The Guardian reports that police have adopted a similar approach that uses cold case calendars rather than decks of cards and during a trial run in five jails, it resulted in 160 tips to the police.
Inside Man is available to stream on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Netflix internationally.
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