Every Inside No. 9 Twist Ranked
35. The Referee's A W**nker - Martin Was Corrupt All Along
Plot: Football referee Martin (David Morrissey) is about to manage the last game of his career, which is between the teams United and Rovers, but when one of the referees takes a bribe, everything goes pear-shaped.
This is a fantastic episode and among the show's best, but this twist is pretty terrible all around.
The way in which it was revealed - Martin takes off his dressing gown to reveal a 'City till I die' tattoo on his back - was good visual storytelling and that was well done, but in every other way this twist fell flat as a pancake.
This ending implies that Martin was manipulating events to ensure that United would lose the match (which falls apart throughout the events of the episode) so that City would benefit from this, but it's not clear how exactly he did this or what the mechanics of his manipulation were. It all just felt rather contrived.
Worse still, it kind-of ruins Martin's character. What made him work on-screen was his entertainingly rigid, no-nonsense demeanour and how the events of the episode challenged Martin by leaving him torn between loyalty to his colleagues and doing his job right, but this final twist ruins all of this.
Martin certainly never came across as the Frank Underwood-esque Machiavellian schemer this ending implies he was.