After the unsolved murder of his partner, PC Thompson (Steve Pemberton) is joined by a new officer, PSCO Varney (Reece Shearsmith) over the course of three nights. In the police car, "Oscar Nine", tensions run high as both officers turn against each other.
This episode contains examples of:
- The Bad Guy Wins: Varney drinks Thompson's blood and the episode ends with him gloating to the audience about how he'll live forever.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Varney begins and ends the episode talking to the audience.
- Brick Joke: Varney constantly tells Thompson that he's concerned about his blood pressure while feeding him a variety of strange concoctions. He is... because he wants to drink it.
- Cannot Cross Running Water: Varney can't, which gets foreshadowed on Night Two when he avoids the bridge despite it being the fastest way to catch the criminal and despite Thompson's protests.
- Chekhov's Gag:
- Varney's over-the-top reactions to Thompson's tikka masala makes a lot of sense when it turns out that he's actually a vampire.
- Varney's attempts to feed nicer food to Thompson, which seems to be part of their bonding... until it turns out Varney always planned to feed on him.
- Chekhov's Gun: Many.
- The knife is not one, but the gun is that it's from the Victorian era.
- The vandalised grave.
- The fact that Varney avoids crossing the river even when it's the quickest route to the suspect.
- Chromosome Casting: The only female character is a voice heard over the radio.
- Danger Takes a Backseat: Varney attacks Thompson from the backseat.
- Dead Partner: The story is set after such an incident with Thompson's previous partner. The opening scene deceivingly suggests this is gonna happen again to his new partner.
- Dirty Cop:
- Thompson is painted to be one. He deceives his partner about the true nature of their stakeout and apparently stole a murder weapon from forensics. Ultimately, his motives turn out to be unselfish.
- Thompson also suspects Varney of being one, citing the fact that nobody knows where he came from and he's asking a lot of questions about his partner's death. This is ultimately played with - Varney killed Thompson's partner, but it's never made clear if he fears getting caught, if he explicitly used his police powers to kill him, or if that's why he wants Thompson dead.
- Discussed Trope: The two protagonists discuss the top five...
- ... character tropes in police dramas:
- The quirky pathologist.
- The rookie cop who faints at his first autopsy.
- The grizzled boss who's really got a heart of gold.
- The maverick loner who wants to solve One Last Job before he retires...
- ... and his new partner who ruffles his feathers but ultimately earns his respect.
- ... vampire tropes:
- They sleep in the daytime.
- They Cannot Cross Running Water.
- They Must Be Invited in.
- They can't bear the smell of garlic.
- They cast no reflection.
- A more subtle one: They move with incredible speed (Varney takes down a perpetrator with a celerity that surprises Thompson.)
- ... character tropes in police dramas:
- Donut Mess with a Cop: The coffee variant. Thompson and Varney have to drink lots of it to stay awake during the night.
- The Ending Changes Everything: Everything, most notably the genre.
- Exact Words: Varney gives many verbal clues as to who he really is, including "long in the tooth" and "dead to the world".
- Fake Static: Thompson fakes connectivity problems when talking to Mission Control in order to buy them time to get to the actual stakeout location.
- Fattening the Victim: Zig-Zagged. Initially Varney tries to improve Thompson's diet to lower his blood pressure. But on the last night he gets him a not-especially-healthy chai latte; either as a last meal, or as seasoning.
- Foregone Conclusion: Subverted. The How We Got Here opening heavily suggests that Thompson's new partner will be dead by the end of the episode. It goes differently.
- Genre Mashup: Much of the runtime is dedicated to deceiving the viewer into thinking the episode is a straightforward police procedural (albeit within the single location confines that define the show), complete with constant lampshading of various tropes associated with the genre. This is all a Red Herring to distract the viewer from the actual main genre conventions that are being fed to us: those of the vampire genre.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: The overlong close-up on Varney sucking blood from Thompson's neck.
- How We Got Here: The opening shot of the episode is of Varney dead in the back of a police car. Or so it seems...
- I Do Not Drink Wine: Varney mentions he doesn't drink alcohol. He also describes himself as a "flexitarian" because he only eats meat once a month. Then on Night 3 he mentions that Dobson died a month ago.
- I Love You, Vampire Son: Varney has taken the now-undead Dobson under his wing.
- Karma Houdini: According to Thompson, the person who killed his last partner was never caught. It turns out to be Varney, who kills him at the end of the episode and gets away with it again.
- Meaningful Name: Thompson's partner's name is Varney.
- Minimalist Cast: Varney and Thompson are the only characters onscreen until the closing minutes.
- Missing Reflection: That's the Wham Shot that causes Thompson to realize Varney is actually a vampire, as he says - because he doesn't have a reflection in the car mirror.
- Must Be Invited: Varney needs to be, which is why he concocts increasingly elaborate ways to avoid getting in the car by himself.
- Not What It Looks Like: Varney and Thompson use hand-warming sachets which they have to shake around to activate. Thompson comments that this would look pretty strange to anyone watching them from outside the car.
- Onscreen Chapter Titles: The episode spans three nights of stakeouts, each of which is announced via on-screen text.
- Pun-Based Title: Once you know the twist.
- Really 700 Years Old: Varney looks like a middle-aged man but implies he is centuries old.
- Red Herring:
- The references to Thompson living above a butcher's shop, which led some to speculate that he was a cannibal or serial killer.
- Varney asking rather abruptly whether Dobson was corrupt, making Thompson and the viewer suspect he's involved in an internal investigation. There's never a straightforward reason given for this, although he may have been looking for an angle to frame someone else for the murder he committed.
- Shout-Out: Varney, as in Varney the Vampire.
- Thompson used to patrol Hampstead Heath, the hunting ground of the newly risen Lucy in Dracula.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: Thompson spends most of the episode hunting for the person who murdered his previous partner. And the ending inverts who is actually hunting whom. Ironically, he was sitting next to him the whole time.
- Vampire Detective Series: Although only a single episode, and downplayed, because the vampirism doesn't seem to play directly into Varney's crime-fighting except when it allows him to catch the killer that would otherwise have killed Thompson.
- Vampire Tropes: A ton of them. (Not that you'll notice them until the end.)
- Wrong Genre Savvy:
- Exploited by Varney. Thompson behaves like he's in a hard-bitten noir detective series, so he doesn't believe he's surrounded by vampires.
- On a more meta level, it's invoked in Varney's narration, which discusses police procedural tropes and insists his story doesn't follow them. Well, it doesn't.
