Midnight Compartment review

The setup

The narrator has fantasized about his boss's wife for a long time, and now he is sharing a train compartment with her. The trip is a work outing, and the boss wants him gone: the whole compartment is theirs, assignment or not. She overrules her husband rather than let an employee sleep in the corridor. Later she complains of the cold, and he weighs his job against the obvious invitation. She settles it, telling him that whatever he is to her husband, he is her personal favorite, and asks him to warm her up.

Episode 2

Episode 2 opens on a near miss. The boss wakes, she blames presentation prep, and he is too shaken by a dream about losing her to ask more. At the next station he orders the employee to fetch coffee; she claims she needs help with her bags and sends her husband instead. With the train leaving in minutes, she reminds the employee exactly whose wife she is and insists that in here he calls her ma'am.

Who's who

• The employee: a staffer with a long-running crush and a short list of excuses
• Mrs. Parker: the boss's wife, who outranks her husband in every way that counts here
• The boss: rude to staff, sentimental in his sleep, and easy to send for coffee

Verdict: 7.6 out of 10

Few setups in this genre are this tidy. A double booking forces everyone into one compartment, the boss is obnoxious enough that nobody roots for him, and the wife handles both men like a seasoned manager. Episode 2's station stop is the highlight, a quick farce of errands and luggage that clears the room for a few stolen minutes. The employee's job-loss worry repeats a lot, but the wife's demand for formality is a nicely perverse closer, and reason enough to stay aboard.

Episode guide