Nadia (Maxine Peake), Aidan (Reece Shearsmith), Galen (Steve Pemberton), Bill (Phil Davis), Angel (Ioanna Kimbrook) and Diana (Sandra Gayer) share their stories with a camera; unaware that their respective worlds are about to collide.
This episode contains examples of:
- Amazing Freaking Grace: Diana auditions to perform at Aidan's funeral with this song.
- Big Bad: It appears to be Galen, but it's actually Bill who appears to be a lonely, repentant older man but he is actually a violent domestic abuser who murdered his wife.
- Big Good: Surprisingly, all of Nadia's personalities (even the monstrous Galen) actually form this, with Aidan being a notable example - a defence mechanism and coping mechanism for her to defeat the big bad - Bill.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Bill's initial monologue makes him seem like a sweet, lonely old man, if a bit of a Racist Grandpa. We discover he is in fact a violent abuser who murdered his wife.
- Blind Black Guy: Diana is a female example.
- Dirty Old Man: Bill comes across this way when he meets Nadia, who he thinks is interested in a relationship with him (unaware she is his daughter.)
- Domestic Abuse: Bill was an abusive husband and eventually murdered his wife.
- Europeans Are Kinky: Nadia mentions this when she describes finding out that a neighbour's Italian maid used to be a porn star.
- Foreshadowing:
- The characters' monologues contain several shared themes including the mentions of rabbits, the death of a parent, Angel, and the name Doreen (who seems to have been Nadia's mother.)
- The series' conceit of every episode taking place in the same location, and the sole Establishing Shot taking place at the start of the episode, hints towards them all being in different rooms of the same house. Though efforts are made to conceal this; the episode opens with Bill arriving at no.9 before being seated in a video interview, implying that the house is a low-budget studio that all the characters are using for different purposes (recording a webcam series, a video will and testament, and so forth).
- Galen's mention of an Insanity Defence based on "hearing voices in his head" seeds the theme of The Reveal (and Nadia's likely fate after the end of the episode).
- In his video dating interview, Bill mentions that his prospective partner has to be a woman, and somewhat grimly notes that he's "had quite enough of male company". It's innocently passed over at the time, but foreshadows the reveal that he's recently been released from prison after a long sentence for murder.
- The only character we've met who we don't see during Diana's rendition of "Amazing Grace" is Bill, a clue that he's not part of Nadia's system of personalities.
- The subplot of Galen stalking and threatening Angel and planning to pay her a "visit" mirrors the threat in the Nadia-Bill subplot, except inverted — instead of the man posing the threat and coming to the woman's house to attack her, it's actually the woman who's the threat to the man and has lured him to her house so she can attack him.
- Good Parents: Aidan is a loving father figure who exists to give Nadia the affection that she didn't receive from Bill.
- Housewife: Nadia is one, although her husband and children never appear.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Galen is apparently in the habit of eating his victims.
- Info Dump: Nadia's other, never-seen personality tells her about the alternate personalities - and explains each of their roles - in a long monologue immediately before Bill comes to visit her.
- Innocently Insensitive: Subverted (eventually). In his initial interview, Bill makes some rather tactless and prejudiced comments in a slightly clueless way which is initially played as if he's just an out-of-touch old man who doesn't know any better. As we learn more about him and his character darkens, however, it gradually becomes clear that this is foreshadowing for what a truly unpleasant person he really is.
- Insanity Defence: Galen says that he used this to get out of jail.
- Missing Mom: Nadia mentions that she never got to meet her mother. It's later revealed she is suppressing memories of witnessing her mother's murder.
- Protectorate: Nadia is this for her alternate personalities, who each serve to defend her in some way:
- Diana, who can't see, blocks out Nadia's memories of her mother's murder.
- Aidan is a loving and protective father.
- Galen uses physical violence when Nadia feels threatened.
- Angel can manipulate her fans on social media to defend herself (really Nadia).
- Politically Incorrect Villain:
- Bill makes some xenophobic and transphobic remarks in his video at the beginning.
- Galen refers to his feigning insanity as having "sat there pretending to be a retard".
- Rabble Rouser: Angel uses her popularity as a social media influencer to rally her fans against any target she chooses. It is ultimately revealed that Angel developed as a mechanism to protect Nadia.
- Red Herring: There are a few hints towards the characters being related to one another in a Tangled Family Tree of some description, but it never quite fits...
- The name Doreen comes up a lot - she's Bill's wife, and both Aidan's and Galen's mother, so are they Bill's kids? No, Nadia is, and she's imagined all the others.
- Aidan adoringly describes his unborn daughter as his "angel". When an actual character called Angel appears right after, it seems to indicate heavily that she is Aidan's daughter and is Only Known By Her Nickname, or that she was named after her nickname. In fact, Aidan and Angel are both one person (Nadia) and reflect her desire to be loved and protected.
- Another Red Herring is Galen's apparent threats against Nadia/the interviewer/Angel. He's no threat to them at all (and even if he did "kill" Angel, it would just be one split personality subsuming another). He is plotting revenge, but against Bill, who richly deserves it.
- Self-Made Orphan:
- Galen is one, having killed both his parents at a young age.
- Nadia also becomes this trope when she kills Bill.
- Serial Killer: Galen, who is on death row in the USA for his crimes.
- Shout-Out: Nadia's video monologues are (initially) played as if it was one of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads.
- Significant Anagram:
- "Diana" and "Aidan" are anagrams of Nadia. "Angel" and "Galen" are anagrams of each other and Galen's surname, Landry, is an anagram of Bill's surname Ryland.
- When Galen appears during Angel's live broadcast, the camera is reversed so that the word LIVE now reads EVIL.
- Social Media Before Reason: Angel discovers that a serial killer is threatening and stalking her. Her immediate reaction is to make a vlog telling her fans all about it.
- In her defence, she doesn't believe that it's actually Galen, and thinks he's bluffing when he says he knows where she lives. Even more in her defence, it turns out the two are merely constructs of the same system of multiple personalities, so she's not actually under any genuine threat from him.
- Someone to Remember Him By: Aidan is dying and his baby daughter is due to be born any day now, which will make her this trope when he dies - or would, if he really existed.
- Split Personality: All characters in the episode except Bill are alternate personalities of Nadia.
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Spoiled by the Format: All the episodes take place "inside no. 9". All the characters don't live in a 9 and there's no other nine suggested to be the one - only Nadia does, because she (and Bill) are the only real characters. The episode does initially attempt to address this, however, with an establishing shot of Bill arriving at the house before cutting to a shot of him being set up for his dating interview, initially implying that the house is actually a studio space being used by all (or most) of the characters for various reasons; it's only later that it's made totally clear that it's actually Nadia's house. - Spoiler Title: Nadia really is "thinking out loud" - through her other personalities.
- Token Evil Teammate: The Reveal shows Galen (in all his stereotypical Card Carrying Villainy) to be a repository for all of Nadia's intolerably violent impulses, and she has an important job for him.
- The Topic of Cancer: Comes up through Aidan's monologue, since it's the reason why he is terminally ill.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Nadia has suppressed her memories of witnessing her mother's murder as a young child.
- Unseen Character: Nadia has a sixth personality not seen on camera, who encourages the others to tell their stories and ultimately leads Nadia to realize what has happened to her.
