Every Inside No. 9 Twist Ranked
9. La Couchette - Maxwell Killed The Dead Passenger... But He Killed The Wrong Man
Plot: A group of people on a French sleeper train have an incredibly difficult and sleepless night, mainly thanks to the fact that one of the passengers in the compartment is dead.
La Couchette is a hilarious and wonderful episode, but much of it is a fairly simple farce. Therefore, this nasty yet enormously entertaining twist ending really gave the episode a nice narrative boost.
It turns out that Maxwell (Shearsmith), the hilariously uptight doctor who is on his way to a job interview, killed the man in the carriage since he was his rival for the job... only he wasn't.
In fact, it's Jorg (Pemberton, who spends nearly the entire episode speaking German), the loud, tiresome and constantly farting German passenger in the compartment, who is Dr Ives, the rival for the job. Maxwell killed the wrong person and he's not guaranteed the job after all.
Once again, it's a deliciously dark, hilarious and savage ending that gives the story a gloriously brutal conclusion. It'll also leave many viewers wondering about what happened next, so it allows La Couchette to linger in the memory for a long time.