Joan Is Awful | Loch Henry | Beyond the Sea | Mazey Day | Demon 79
"My whole life, I never wished harm on anyone."
"To be honest, I don't want the apocalypse to come about any more than you do. So let's stop it happening, you and me. All we have to do is deliver three sacrifices in three days. It's only three killings."
— Gaap
Nida Huq (Anjana Vasan), a meek department store worker, sticks out like a sore thumb in 1979 Northern England. When she accidentally summons a demon named Gaap (Paapa Essiedu), he tells her that she must now commit three human sacrifices by May Day to avert the end of the world.
This episode is the first to be released under the show's Red Mirror imprint. It costars Katherine Rose Morley as Vicky, David Shields as Michael Smart, Nicholas Burns as Keith Holligan, and Shaun Dooley as Len Fisher.
Tropes:
- Affably Evil: Gaap never drops the cheery and friendly demeanor as he goads Nida into murder.
- All for Nothing:
- In a fit of rage, Nida killed the man who had been raping his daughter, preventing her from committing suicide at the age of 28 due to the trauma of it all. Gaap later reveals that her father's death has given her a new lease on life; she will no longer be subjected to her father's abuse for the next five years, will become a mother at the age of 29, and a grandmother at the age of 57. However, because the world ends at the end of the episode, nothing Gaap tells her will happen matters because she will die at a young age alongside billions of other people.
- For the same reason, all of Nida's murders count toward this. She killed a remorseful man and an innocent man for nothing because she couldn't stop the apocalypse from happening due to her failure to kill the racist politician.
- And I Must Scream: Gaap explains that his fate is this if he were to fail his initiation: spending an eternity of loneliness floating in an endless void. By the end of the episode, he fails because Nida is prevented from killing the racist politician, but a loophole in his punishment allows him to bring a friend, Nida, who willingly goes with him as the world ends.
- Apocalypse How: On a planetary level. As the clock strikes midnight and Nida misses her task, life on Earth gets wiped out by nuclear hellfire.
- Asshole Victim: Gaap claims that the people around them are awful (rapists, paedophiles, murderers, racists, etc). to justify Nida killing them. Though interestingly, there is also an element of "not too asshole" going on. Nida and Gaap find that murderers are excluded from the pact. Also, the guys in hell are not pleased that she decides to kill Michael Smart, because they're fans of his work and look forward to him becoming Prime Minister Evil.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Gaap reveals that the evil politician Michael Smart killed a dog at age 12.
- Bittersweet Ending: Almost a Downer Ending. Nida fails to kill the racist politician before May Day, setting off Armageddon for the rest of the world, and Gaap is cast out to eternal oblivion by the other demons for also failing his initiation. However, he found a loophole in his punishment and is able to take Nida with him, meaning they'll spend the rest of eternity together in an endless void while the world that rejected Nida burns.
- Bookends: Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes" opens and closes the episode.
- Continuity Nod:
- The talisman that summons Gaap is marked with the Y-like White Bear symbol. After she properly summons the demon Gaap into reality it gets an extra line through it, symbolizing the three people she must now kill. The symbol is seen again in the vision of Michael Smart's future, where he uses it as his new party's logo.
- Amongst the visions show of the future where Michael Smart gets to be a PM is a shot of a street in flames as people can be seen running away from a Dog.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- As soon as she's given her mission to find human sacrifices, the first person she randomly runs into is pedophile who's raping his own young daughter, and she encounters him next to a canal, at night, with no witnesses around. Gaap lampshades this "beginner's luck".
- Because Keith's murder didn't count toward the "three kills before May Day" tally because he was a murderer, Nida killing his innocent brother right after him and before midnight prevented the apocalypse from occurring in his place. Gaap points out the luck of that happening.
- The Corrupter: Gaap drives the innocent Nida to murder several people. For the greater good.
- The Corruptible: Gaap continuously reminds Nida that the reason the pact works at all is that she is not, in fact, Incorruptible Pure Pureness, and has a darker streak in herself, the one that he can manipulate into doing terrible things. Otherwise, the token wouldn't even activate.
- Creepy Child: The young Laura is stoic and tends to stare; she creeps Vicky out. According to Gaap, it's because her father is raping her.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: In-universe, the police duo has the stark realisation - for the few seconds they have left - that everything Nida told them about the demons, ritual murders and The End of the World as We Know It due to failing to score the third kill was true when nuclear missiles start to saturate the countryside. They are notably more unhinged by this than by the fact that a blastwave is heading towards them.
- Dead Man Honking: When the politician's car goes offroad and hits a tree, the horn goes off.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: England in 1979 is openly racist and sexist, driving many of Nida's murders.
- Denser and Wackier: While still rife with bloody murders and a far-from-happy ending, this is one of the most comedic episodes in the show thanks to Gaap's amusing bond and banter with Nida, not to mention being the second explicitly supernaturally-influenced episode after the previous one.
- Face Death with Dignity: After Keith realizes that Nida wants to kill him, he accepts it because he knows he is hated for the murder of his wife. He even puts his glasses on the nightstand and calmly sits on the bed. It's a contrast to the brutal death by hammer Nida subsequently inflicts.
- Fair Cop: Suzie, the very pretty police adjunct.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Gaap acknowledges that his horned, monstrous demonic form is probably too much for the human Nida, so he turns into a human man dressed like Bobby Farrell from Boney M..
- Hope Spot: It is revealed near the end that the talisman has returned to normal, implying that everything except the murders Nida committed was all in Nida's head. Nothing happens right away when the clock strikes twelve... Then, as the apocalypse approaches, some sirens sound in the distance, and Gaap returns for one last conversation with Nida before he's cast out into oblivion, revealing that everything was real after all.
- Hypocrite: Nida's racist coworker Vicky tells her to serve Keith because Vicky doesn't want the encounter to cut into her lunch break... even though Nida is pointedly in the middle of hers. When Nida protests that she doesn't want to serve a known killer, Vicky unconcernedly snaps at her to do her job.
- Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Having no other forms of recourse of the racialized abuse she experiences, Nida tends to envision violently harming people who offend her before Cutting Back to Reality.
- It's Personal: Deconstructed. Nida could have killed just about anyone as her third victim and got the job done. But since she obsesses over killing Smart in particular, she misses a lot of other chances and easy targets, ultimately failing with her hit. And unlike The Dead Zone, she doesn't ruin Smart's political career by proxy, because a few hours later, the atomic holocaust she was supposed to prevent in the first place happens.
- Karma Houdini:
- Michael Smart, a popular politician with racist ideals, is about to be murdered by Nida until she is caught by police at the last second... though he may have been obliterated in the subsequent nuclear armageddon.
- Vicky, Nida's racist coworker, is clearly set up to be an Asshole Victim with her bullying manners and micro-aggressions. Nevertheless, the only payback she receives are those in Nida's imagination.
- Lady in Red: Early on, the timid Nida admires a red leather jacket. Vicky mockingly says that she could never pull it off. When she gets confident enough to kill Michael Smart, she takes it and wears her hair down.
- Liquid Courage: Prior to Nida's second murder, Gaap encourages Nida to go to the pub. She orders two triple scotches, both for herself.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Are Gaap and his prophesied apocalypse genuine, or is Nida, whom we know to have violent indulgent fantasy segues and a family history of mental illness, a nutcase trying to justify the murders? Gaap is only ever seen from her point of view, and the final scenes where Len sadly says that Nida's mind is gone show the "demonic talisman" to appear like a regular domino. Nuclear armageddon apparently happening from the POVs of the cops in the end tips the scales towards real, though it could still be the final notes of her breakdown. The ambiguity is established with the opening theme, Art Garfunkel's "Bright Eyes":"Oh, is it a dream?"
- Missing Mom: Nida has been feeling unmoored since the death of her mother.
- Must Be Invited: Gaap has to ask Nida for permission to enter her world.
- The Needs of the Many: Gaap rationalizes killing three people in three days to prevent the apocalypse. He says more people die by falling off ladders in the same time period.
- Number of the Beast: Played for Laughs, Gaap dials 666 on a rotary phone to reach Hell's tech helpline.
- Out-of-Genre Experience: Even more than the episode that precedes it. This is also openly announced, as this installment marks the inauguration of the Red Mirror label, focused on dark fantasy and horror stories.
- Parental Incest: Gaap talks Nida into killing Tim by giving her a vision of him raping his daughter Laura.
- Pastiche: The opening title sequence and Nida's indulgent fantasy segues are styled after retro slasher/horror flicks.
- President Evil: Michael Smart will become this in the Bad Future where he is elected PM. He founded the Britannia Party, clearly a Neo-Fascist party.
- Prophet Eyes: Nida's eyes turn milky when she has visions of the future.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Gaap is a demon sent out to motivate an innocent woman to commit three murders in order to prevent the apocalypse. However, despite being a demon, he is not a bad guy; he simply has no choice but to do his job or face eternal punishment from his superiors for failing his initiation, and he is shown to be terrified of his fate if he fails. He also sympathizes with Nida more than almost anyone else she encounters in the episode, save for the police chief toward the end.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The police officers are the most sympathetic characters Nida meets in the whole story, except possibly for Affably Evil Gaap.
- Rule of Three: Gaap informs Nida she must deliver three sacrifices to prevent the apocalypse. The kills are kept track via three lines on the talisman which disappear as each murder is committed.
- Shout-Out:
- The late-70s setting is clarified by a video show playing current hits "Does Your Mother Know" by ABBA, "Good Night Tonight" by Paul McCartney, and "Rasputin" by Boney M..
- The last act shares quite a bit with of plot with The Dead Zone, which was also released in 1979.
- Police chief Len Fisher gasps 'Jesus Christ, they've done it' as he sees the nuclear bombs fall - the exact same words uttered in a parallel scene in Threads.
- Verging into Take That! territory, Nida's Bad Future vision of Michael Smart rising to power contains a newspaper reading "Crush the saboteurs" - an actual headline
used by the (notoriously right-wing) Daily Mail in the run up to the 2017 UK general election.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The romantic "Bright Eyes" plays as the world gets destroyed in a nuclear hellfire.
- Stress Vomit: Nida runs to her toilet and vomits after her first murder.
- Train Escape: A train separates Nida from the detective trailing her.
- Tuckerization: Nida Huq shares her surname with showrunner Charlie Brooker's real wife Konnie Huq. Like Nida, she is of South Asian descent and was raised in the UK.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Michael Smart, the Conservative politician, really is every bit as much of a white supremacist as the National Front. He is just smart enough to know that being openly racist is considered uncivilized, so he uses center-right talking points instead.
- When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Nida has to kill one person before midnight for three days, lest the world will end. She cuts it close on day 2, and Gaap impatiently tells her how many minutes to midnight she has left.
- You Are Worth Hell: By the end, Nida abandons the Earth ravaged by a nuclear apocalypse to spend eternity in the void with Gaap. Considering her options, it's seen as preferable.
- You Bastard!: After killing Keith and his innocent brother Chris, Nida angrily tells off Gaap for treating her ordeal as a joke, but her words also apply to the audience.Nida: This is all right for you. No blood on your hands. You're just watching. Light entertainment. If the apocalypse does come, you'll have a big fun finale.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Nida's confession at the police station sounds like the tale of a madwoman. It doesn't help that she cannot back up any of her claims until it's too late.
