The Riddle of the Sphinx (Inside No. 9) was characterised by Pemberton as a thriller in the style of Anthony Shaffer's 1970 play "Sleuth", while Shearsmith identified the episode as particularly theatrical, in the style of "Sleuth" and Ira Levin's 1978 play "Deathtrap". BBC executives, according to Shearsmith, saw the episode as a cross between "Sleuth" and Willy Russell's 1980 play "Educating Rita" that read as if it had been authored by psychopaths. The executive producer Jon Plowman suggested that the first half of the episode plays out like a radio play. The word-play and tea-drinking in this part of the episode are, in the writers' opinion, very
Woman's film film is the motif of escape. Woman's films allow their respective female protagonists to escape their everyday lives and their socially and sexually prescribed roles. The escape can take the form of a journey to another place such as the USSR in "Letter to Brezhnev" (1985) and Greece in "Shirley Valentine" (1989) or education as in "Educating Rita" (1983) and sexual initiation as in "Wish You Were Here" (1987). The beginnings of the genre can be traced back to D. W. Griffith, whose one- and two-reelers "A Flash of Light" (1910) and "Her Awakening" (1911) feature the trademark narratives of