Sardines

**Sardines** is the first episode of the first season of Inside No.9.

## Plot

Rebecca and Jeremy host their engagement party at Rebecca's family's stately home. The guests play the parlor game sardines, a variation of hide-and-seek in which one person hides and the other players have to join them in their hiding place once they are found. Rebecca finds Ian  (who works with Jeremy) in a bedroom wardrobe. As they wait for more people to arrive, Ian mistakenly calls her "Rachel". A young man, Lee, enters the room but does not find the pair, though they are later found and joined by Rebecca's prudish brother Carl, and then Carl's flamboyant partner Stuart. Jeremy's ex-girlfriend Rachel  finds the group and joins them. Ian mentions that Jeremy frequently talks about "you", but it is unclear whether he is talking to Rebecca or Rachel. To Rebecca's annoyance, Stuart, Rachel and Ian briefly leave the wardrobe for a break. Stuart enters the en suite where Geraldine  is sat on the toilet. In the wardrobe, Carl and Rebecca talk; the former is uncomfortable, and, when Rebecca asks why, he tells her to "look where we are".

Ian, Rachel and Geraldine join Rebecca and Carl. Geraldine says that the room is normally locked, but Rebecca rebukes her. Stuart rejoins the group after using the toilet. As the group talk, Mark  and his wife, Liz, enter the bedroom, unaware of the people hiding in the wardrobe. The pair talk candidly before beginning foreplay and lying down on the bed. Geraldine shouts to alert them, and those in the wardrobe pretend they did not hear Mark and Liz's conversation. Mark and Liz reluctantly enter the wardrobe. As the doors close, Rachel's boyfriend Lee enters the room, but as the wardrobe has become more cramped, Stuart and Lee hide under the bed and Ian moves to the *en suite* bathroom. Stuart and Carl argue, and it is revealed that Carl has a fear of intimacy. When "Stinky" John   enters the room, both those in the wardrobe and under the bed claim there is no room, so he hides behind a curtain. Jeremy enters the room and tells Rebecca he is going to pick up another guest from the train station, but as he turns to leave he mistakenly calls her "Rachel". Andrew, Rebecca's father, enters and becomes annoyed when he sees people hiding in different places. He forces Jeremy, Stuart, Lee and Stinky John into the wardrobe with everyone else and follows them in.

The people in the wardrobe are uncomfortable, not least because of John's odor. Geraldine passes around mints as Andrew tells Mark that he no longer has contact with Dicky Lawrence, a potential business contact of Mark's. Andrew sings the "sardine song", but Carl angrily stops him. Andrew and Geraldine reminisce about a scout jamboree held in the house many years ago, but Geraldine remembers that a boy named Phillip Harrison, nicknamed "Little Pip", said Andrew did "terrible things", and that the police were involved. Carl says how Andrew paid Pip's family to move away, and Andrew counters by claiming he did nothing to Pip and was only teaching him how to wash himself. Carl implies that he and John were not as lucky as Pip, and John says he can smell carbolic soap. There is silence, and Stuart points out no one else is looking for them, but they realize Ian has not yet returned from the bathroom. Jeremy says Ian is the person he was going to pick up from the station, but when Mark claims Ian is already at the party, Jeremy reveals the person Mark is referring to is not Ian. Outside, "Ian" locks the wardrobe and sprays it with lighter fluid while singing the sardine song. Carl realises Ian is actually Phillip, and the episode ends with Phillip leaning against the wardrobe, a lighter in his hand.

## Cast

* Katherine Parkinson - Rebecca
* Tim Key - Ian
* Luke Pasqualino - Lee
* Steve Pemberton - Carl
* Reece Shearsmith - Stuart
* Ophelia Lovibond - Rachel
* Anne Reid - Geraldine
* Julian Rhind-Tutt - Mark
* Anna Chancellor - Elizabeth
* Marc Wootton - "Stinky" John
* Ben Willbond - Jeremy
* Timothy West - Andrew

## Spot The Hare

A hard one to start! It's on the bedside table near the wardrobe.