Helen McCrory

Inside No. 9's best guest performances

Shearsmith and Pemberton can't do it all on their own. Here are Inside No. 9's most memorable turns by guest actors.

Behind the scenes on The Harrowing

Director David Kerr lets Den of Geek in on the secrets of Inside No. 9's classic horror cinema tribute The Harrowing, an episode with an unforgettable ending...

Failing to make it as a lute player in a band called Mortal Coil, young Bill Shakespeare (a chirpy Mathew Baynton) heads for London to write plays, befriend Queen Elizabeth (Helen McCrory) and foil a Spanish plot to invade England. At least that's how the gang behind CBBC's Horrible Histories tells it. There's no tragedy here; as bard biography, it's more fun than Shakespeare in Love, with a constant stream of slapstick gags and sometimes fruity jokes that wouldn't be out of place in a panto.

Six main actors and supporting cast play a variety of roles in the Horrible Histories' take on William Shakespeare's lost years. The Bard had tried being in a band but it didn't work out so it's off to London for fame and fortune and a nasty Spanish Catholic plot to kill Queen Elizabeth I.

It's all a hoot with touches of Python, Blackadder and The Young Ones as the great and the good of Elizabethan England tread the boards. Damian Lewis does a cameo as Sir Richard Hawkins, Ben Willbond hams it up as King Philip II of Spain with his trio of assassins, miserable Christopher Marlow (Jim Howick) helps the Bard and Helen McCrory is all you hope for as Elizabeth I.

Great fun but will it fill the big screen?

Damian Lewis and wife take roles in Bill

Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory now hope to finally impress their toughest critics: their children. The couple have taken on roles in Bill, a new children's comedy about William Shakespeare, after they fell in love with Horrible Histories as a family.

Radio Times review

This was the rarest of comic beasts: half a dozen standalone episodes with jokes that weren't laid out on a plate, but instead jumped out from corners or tripped you up during awkward pauses. It was written by League of Gentlemen alumni Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and performed by them in various guises alongside the likes of Timothy West, Helen McCrory and Gemma Arterton. It was dark, of course, but otherwise deliciously unpredictable: the first was about an uncomfortable engagement party; the second was a silent comedy with slapstick from Charlie Chaplin's great-granddaughter, Oona.

"I backed a horse at 20 to one. It came in at half-past four." Even if you don't care for the joke, it's irresistible as told by Tommy Cooper, perhaps the most intrinsically funny man who ever lived. David Threlfall is great as the comedian in this biodrama, with support from Amanda Redman as long-suffering wife Gwen and Helen McCrory as his mistress, Mary. A rather sad account of a man in declining health who spent a lifetime avoiding getting his round in, relieved by rib-tickling recreations of his stage act.

If all footage of Tommy Cooper's performances was destroyed and future generations were left with just this drama to try to work out the reason for his popularity, they would be completely stumped.

A heavy drinker, tight-fisted, physically abusive and (on the evidence here at least) not even especially funny, Cooper is an unlikely candidate for national treasure status.

Shameless star David Threlfall delivers an extraordinary performance as the comedian, recreating his act and his patter to an uncanny extent.

But Simon Nye's script, based on John Fisher's 2006 biography, zeroes in on the scandal in his personal life, and his 17-year affair with assistant Mary Kay (Helen McCrory).

Kay first joined Cooper on tour in the 1960s when his wife Gwen, ­nicknamed Dove (Amanda Redman), opted to stay at home with their children.

Cooper never told Dove he'd hired a replacement, and it would take a much more naïve person than me to think a middle-aged male comedian could travel the country with just his attractive female assistant for company and NOT end up having an affair with them.

By the time of Cooper's death on stage on 1984, you've gone right off him. Threlfall, on the other hand, is absolutely tremendous.

Radio Times review

David Threlfall delivers a tour de force as Tommy Cooper, undergoing a transformation that's much deeper than just the donning of a fez.

Cooper's studied incompetence with magic tricks made him a star, but Simon Nye's script centres on Cooper's relationships with two women, his volatile and long-suffering wife Dove (Amanda Redman) and his mistress Mary Kay (Helen McCrory).

Cooper is hard to like - he drinks too much, he's tight with money and he's physically abusive - and by the end of two hours your patience may have run dry.

But Threlfall and Nye work hard to show why Cooper inspired abiding loyalty in both women, and in his friends and fellow comedians, right until that final show when he collapses on stage in front of a TV audience, an extraordinary 15 minutes from Threlfall who does the act note for note.

Helen McCrory and Reece Shearsmith star as Tabitha and Hector, sibling proprietors of the final episode in this blackly comic series. We're in a gothic mansion with a sinister secret at the top and schoolgirl Katy (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) may have bitten off more than she can chew when she agrees to housesit. It's a trip flickering with demonic humour but by the time we reach the closing scene we've gone over to the dark side completely. Sleep well.