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The Perfect Balance of Violence and Humanity: Why Mr. Inbetween Is One of the Greatest Crime Shows Ever Made

Writer: Samuel Brower
Samuel Brower
May 21
6 min read

There are crime dramas that entertain you. There are crime dramas that shock you. Then there are the rare ones that feel so honest, so perfectly constructed, that they almost stop feeling like television altogether. Mr. Inbetween is one of those shows. Created, written by, and starring Scott Ryan, the series quietly became one of the best television dramas of the last decade. It never relied on massive spectacle, endless plot twists, or prestige-TV self-importance. Instead, it did something far more difficult: It told a simple story almost perfectly. At its core, Mr. Inbetween is about a man trying to live between two worlds.

 

Ray Shoesmith is a loving father, loyal friend, caring brother, and working-class Australian guy who enjoys toasted (but never “raw”) sandwiches, dim sims, and hanging out with his mates. He is also a professional criminal capable of committing violent crimes. The brilliance of the show is that it never treats those two realities as separate. Ray is not secretly a monster pretending to be normal. He is not a good man corrupted by crime. He is both things at once, and the entire series is built around the impossible tension created by that contradiction. That tension is what makes the show extraordinary.

 

The Story Structure Is Nearly Perfect

 

One of the things writers should study about Mr. Inbetween is how relentlessly and naturally the tension escalates across all three seasons. Most crime dramas fall into repetition. They introduce a dangerous lifestyle, then keep resetting the board so the protagonist can continue operating indefinitely. Consequences rarely stick. Relationships bend unrealistically around the plot. Violence becomes spectacle rather than erosion. Mr. Inbetween does the opposite. Every act of violence in the show creates another fracture in Ray’s life. Every attempt to balance normalcy with brutality pushes him further toward isolation. The story behaves like a chain reaction. That is why the show feels so real.

 

Ray begins the series believing he can compartmentalize his life. He thinks he can be a father and a killer. A boyfriend and an enforcer. A decent mate and a violent criminal. He believes he can stay “in between.” But the entire structure of the series is designed to prove that he cannot. Violence contaminates everything around him. His relationship with his girlfriend Ally slowly deteriorates because intimacy requires honesty, vulnerability, and emotional safety. Ray can provide none of those things for long. The closer someone gets to him, the more dangerous his life becomes. Eventually, Ally realizes what the audience slowly comes to understand: Ray is incapable of truly escaping who he is. The tragedy is that he genuinely wants a connection.

 

Ray’s relationship with Ally fails. His brother dies. His daughter, Brittany, slowly drifts away as she gets older and begins to understand the reality of her father. Even Ray’s professional relationships deteriorate because violence inevitably destroys trust among criminals as well. In Ray’s world, everybody eventually turns on everybody else. Because that is what violence does: it spreads. The show understands something many crime stories miss: violence is not just destructive in the moment. It reshapes the emotional atmosphere around a person. It poisons relationships. It isolates people. It teaches them to solve problems through domination and fear. Ray keeps trying to preserve fragments of a normal life while simultaneously participating in a world fundamentally incompatible with normal human connection. That contradiction is the engine of the entire series. And the writers literally never cheat.

 

The Mirror Structure of the Final Scene

 

The final scene of Mr. Inbetween is one of the best endings in modern television because it completes the series’ thematic argument without overexplaining it. The show opens with Ray punishing another criminal for making a mistake. It establishes immediately who Ray is: calm, polite, funny, dangerous. A man capable of explosive violence hidden beneath an ordinary exterior. The final scene mirrors this perfectly. Ray is now isolated, living in the outback, driving a cab, existing on the outer edges of society. He has lost nearly everything meaningful in his life. The illusion that he could maintain balance is gone.

 

Then two threatening young men enter his cab. The scene unfolds with unbearable tension because the audience understands something the threatening young men do not: Ray Shoesmith hasn’t changed. The famous smile at the end of the series is not triumphant, heroic, or even sinister. It is acceptance. Ray can run from cities, leave relationships, and isolate himself geographically, but he cannot escape himself. Ray refused to change, so the world changed around him. The story still comes full circle. And that is masterful storytelling.

 

Why the Show Feels So Different

 

Another reason Mr. Inbetween works so well is its refusal to romanticize criminality. Ray is competent. Sometimes charismatic. Occasionally, even likable. But the show never pretends his life is glamorous. His criminal world is filled with awkward conversations, mundane errands, lonely stakeouts, unstable people, emotional damage, and sudden brutality. The violence is quick, ugly, and often deeply uncomfortable. The humor emerges naturally from character rather than from forced quips.

 

That grounded realism gives the show enormous power. It also understands pacing better than most modern television. Episodes are lean. Scenes end early. Dialogue is economical. Emotional moments are understated. The series trusts the audience enough to avoid overexplaining itself. As writers, there is a massive lesson there. Stories become more powerful when they stop trying to convince the audience they are important. Mr. Inbetween never begs for attention. It simply executes at an extremely relatable level.

 

The Long Road of Scott Ryan

 

The story behind the creation of Mr. Inbetween is almost as inspiring as the series itself. Before the television show existed, Scott Ryan created a low-budget indie film called The Magician in 2005. He wrote, directed, edited, and starred in it himself. The film was reportedly shot on an incredibly small budget and introduced the world to Ray Shoesmith for the first time. The film gained attention on the festival circuit and developed a cult following, but Ryan did not suddenly become a Hollywood success story. In fact, almost the opposite happened. Years passed. Then more years passed. The industry moved on.

 

Ryan continued writing while working ordinary jobs. According to multiple interviews and profiles, he spent years driving taxis and delivering pizzas while trying to keep the dream alive. That is the reality of creative work most people never talk about. Talent is not always rewarded immediately. Sometimes, the gap between creating something worthwhile and the world recognizing it can last decades. Eventually, producer and director Nash Edgerton became a major supporter of Ryan and helped bring the project to a larger audience. 

 

Mr. Inbetween was initially commissioned through FX Australia. Then, FX Australia shut down before the show launched. Imagine how crushing that must have felt. After years of struggle, Ryan finally gets a shot, only for the platform behind the show to collapse. Fortunately, FX in the United States saw the series and fully backed it. And the result was extraordinary. Critics loved it. Audiences loved it. Writers loved it. Filmmakers loved it. The show slowly became one of those rare series spread largely through word of mouth, where viewers passionately tell other people, “You have to watch this.”

 

The Lesson for Writers and Artists

 

There is an important lesson in Scott Ryan’s journey, especially for independent creators. The modern creative world often conditions artists to think success must happen quickly or not at all. Social media pushes constant visibility. Algorithms reward immediacy. Many creators quietly believe that if they do not “make it” within a few years, they have failed. Scott Ryan’s story destroys that idea. He created Ray Shoesmith long before the world was ready for him.

 

Plenty of talented people never receive the audience they deserve. That is the painful truth about art. But authentic work has a strange durability. A genuinely strong character. A genuinely honest voice. A genuinely compelling story. Those things tend to survive. They find people slowly over time. Ray Shoesmith endured because he felt real. And Scott Ryan endured because he believed in his craft and the character enough to keep carrying him through years of rejection, obscurity, and ordinary life.

 

That is something every writer should remember. You do not need industry permission to create meaningful work. You need passion. You need endurance. You need the willingness to continue refining your voice without worrying about external validation. Because sometimes the difference between obscurity and recognition is simply surviving long enough for the world to catch up with what you created. And when it does, all those years of invisible work suddenly become part of the story, just like they did for Scott Ryan.

 

 
 
 

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©2026 by Samuel Brower

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