Inside Man, episode 3, review: the bizarre choices of David Tennant's vicar are impossible to overlook

The writer of Inside Man (BBC One), Steven Moffat, told Radio Times last week that if he was in charge of the fates of television critics he “would probably have half of them shot”. Lucky for me that he isn’t, then. Moffat can throw any amount of good lines or clever little plot twists into this show, but it is built on a flaw so fundamental that it’s impossible to get past it.

Harry Watling (David Tennant) is a vicar. Now, I know vicars are imperfect human beings like the rest of us. But the premise of Inside Man is that Watling has got himself into a horrendous situation – keeping a woman prisoner in his cellar, with plans to murder her – because he is protecting his son (fair enough) but also the identity of a verger who downloaded child porn. “He’s a vulnerable person. I have a duty to protect him. I’m doing the right thing – I have to do the right thing, I’m a f---ing vicar,” Watling explains.

Hang on. Never mind Edgar. Aren’t the abused children the vulnerable ones in this scenario? Wouldn’t any right-minded person, never mind a vicar, report Edgar to the police, thereby avoiding all this silliness? Apparently he’s worried that the police will believe maths tutor Janice Fife’s mistaken idea that Ben, the vicar’s teenage son (played by Moffat’s own son, Louis Oliver), downloaded the porn. But surely the police could establish the truth of it with a few simple computer checks, or perhaps a search of Edgar’s bedroom?

The police turned up in this episode, and finally Watling attempted to tell the truth; yet in order to keep the plot turning and the programme going, the detectives had to behave in an entirely illogical manner.

This same suspension of disbelief is needed when following the story of useless crime reporter Beth (Lydia West). She could have taken her concerns about a missing maths tutor to the police, but instead allows herself to be driven around by an aggressive Scot on the instructions of Stanley Tucci’s prisoner, who happened to have killed his wife.

I still want to know how – if – Janice is going to get out of that cellar. But I suspect it will be very silly.