Mark Benton

The first run of Inside No. 9's collection of short stories was met with much acclaim especially for the dialogue-free A Quiet Night In. This week's episode, La Couchette, didn't really have the same special edge to it but did at least have its moments.

Set in carriage number nine of a sleeper train going through Paris, the story introduced us to a number of characters who were all forced into a small space together. They included a doctor who was about to give a speech to the WHO (Shearsmith), a flatulent German (Pemberton), an Australian backpacker (Jessica Gunning), a posh stowaway (Jack Whitehall) and a couple on the way to their daughter's wedding (Mark Benton and Julie Hesmondhalgh). The twist in the tale here was that, about half way through the piece, the passengers realised that one of their number was dead.

Pemberton and Shearsmith's script then took a darker turn as the characters decided whether to risk stopping the train or inform the authorities once they'd reached their destination.

I've personally always been a fan of Shearsmith and Pemberton's work and I thought La Couchette definitely had some merit. I felt that every character was well-realised and that there was some genuine moments of fine observational humour especially in regards Benton and Hesmondhalgh's characters. The story also contained an ending I didn't see coming and it left me with the icy feeling I often get after watching a Pemberton and Shearsmith piece. On the other hand I wasn't a fan of the toilet humour employed by Pemberton's character and I thought that Jack Whitehall added little to the episode overall.

The return of Inside No. 9 was a delight. Strangers trapped in a train compartment, in this case a TGV couchette, is hardly more original a starting point than time travel, but Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, who wrote and starred, scored a laugh ever few seconds and then a home run with a savage resolution.

The remarkable thing - and here credit is shared with a cast that included Mark Benton and Julie Hesmondhalgh - was that the passengers were little more than stereotypes: a drunken German; a tarty Aussie backpacker; a control-freak Englishman and Jack Whitehall (who has become a type all by himself). Yet they were as fresh as the pilgrims in Chaucer's Prologue.

The anthology series from Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith returns. We begin on a six-berth sleeper in France. Without giving too much away, expect fart jokes, an unpleasant discovery and, in a show that makes a virtue of its claustrophobic environs, mismatched passengers winding each other up. The script is a delight, with one line delivered by Jack Whitehall quite possibly the most gloriously tasteless you'll hear on television all year. Also starring Julie Hesmondhalgh and Mark Benton.

Radio Times review

I've been rubbing my hands in glee at the return of this superb anthology series written by and starring Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith - my modern comedy heroes. I also like to picture Julie Hesmondhalgh secretly dancing a jig that she let Corrie's Hayley die, thus freeing herself up for some cracking roles: Henry's forbearing sister Cleo in Cucumber and now a chance to play in a comedy of manners, bunked up in a confined space with this bunch.

As before, the shtick each week is to tell a new short-story set inside a location numbered nine. Here it's a couchette on a TGV hurtling across Europe. Mark Benton plays her amiable hubby, while Jessica Gunning (from Pride and That Day We Sang) plays an Aussie backpacker, who hasn't had a scrub round in days but still gets it on with a toff freeloader (Jack Whitehall).

Shearsmith and Pemberton give a mini-masterclass as an uptight, sleep-deprived prof and a German stoked up on Bier und Bratwurst. Only they could get such mileage out of flatulence in 2015. It's hilarious, sharply observed - and of course there's more than a sting in the tail.

Those masters of the dark arts, the former League Of Gentlemen co-stars Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, return with a second instalment of their deliciously macabre shorts, the first series of which won best comedy performance at the Royal Television Society awards last week.
Like a Tales Of The Unexpected for the 21st century, each perfectly formed 30 minutes offers a masterclass in storytelling: witty, imaginative, inventive and suspenseful - with a clever twist at the end for good measure.
The six tales are linked by the number nine and in the opening episode, La Couchette, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Mark Benton, Jessica Gunning and Jack Whitehall join Pemberton and Shearsmith on board the sleeper train from Paris to Bourg-Saint-Maurice. They're a motley collection trying to get a quiet night's sleep as the train makes its way across France, but as the sleeping compartment fills up, the chances of that begin to look highly unlikely...
The setting for future episodes include a séance in the grand Victorian villa, a modern-day family get-together, a 17th-century village witch trial and a volunteer call centre, with Alison Steadman, Claire Skinner, Jane Horrocks, Paul Kaye and Tom Riley among the cast. Special mention must go to Sheridan Smith, however, for her performance in next week's offering, The 12 Days Of Christine, a powerful, moving story of one woman's rocky journey through life. It is an absolute gem, one of the best things I have seen on television this year.

For Reece Shearsmith, whose collaborations with fellow writer and actor Steve Pemberton include The League Of Gentlemen] and Psychoville, there's something irresistible about the dark side of life. "Whenever we've tried to do anything lighter, it doesn't feel complete until we've added some darkness", says Reese, who co-wrote Inside No. 9 with Steve. "The tales are not always horrible - but then again, maybe our threshold of what's horrible is very different from everyone else's!"

Their new collection of surreal stories opens in the No. 9 carriage of a sleeper train in France. Jack Whitehall, Waterloo Road's Mark Benton and former Corrie star Julie Hesmondhalgh are among the passengers trapped for one night on a journey that takes a chilling turn.

"The thrill is that viewers never quite know what's happening," says Reece, 45. "Each episode starts with its feet on the ground, and the scenery looks familiar. That's how we lull you. You think: 'I've seen this before' - and then suddenly it turns into something you definitely haven't seen before. We hope that's what makes Inside No. 9 more arresting."

I am still a little worried that Harvey Easter, the indefatigably cheery protaganist of Mr Blue Sky, will someday soon rip the mask of optimism from his face and go on a killing rampage, starting with his live-in son-in-law-to-be. As this young man, a grimestep DJ who is paid in energy drinks and therefore returns to the Easter household at 5am on a Red Bull high, is called Kill-R, it will give Harvey the opportunity to snarl: "Who's the killer now?" as he takes aim.

When I reviewed last year's first series of Andrew Collins' slow-burning hit comedy, I thought Harvey was bound to 'reverse into gloom' at some stage. The second series opened with his entire family kidnapped and replaced almost wholesale by the cast of TV's Outnumbered, but plucky old Harvey just got on with the job of being happy.

So Mark Benton's Harvey, a performance which is an essay in finely nuanced felicity (and how much harder must this be to play than the sobs of a broken man?) didn't falter even though the detached irony of Rebecca Front, last year's Mrs E, was replaced by Claire Skinner bringing with her Tyger Drew-Honey, both from Outnumbered. Skinner is the leading exponent of wringing comedic value out of the middle-class mum, determined never to yell "Because I said so." And I'm sure I'll get used to her in this, but for now I can't imagine her without chiselled-jawed, puppy-eyed Hugh Dennis as the husband who is a perpetual disappointment.

Tyger took over the role of 16-year-old Robbie with aplomb, asking for money to buy fruit - street slang for drugs - while their older child and bride-to-be, Charlie, was played by Rosamund Hanson with a quirkiness heightened by what was either a speech impediment or a plethora of tongue piercings. The darkness in this solidly engineered comedy, it transpires, is not embedded in Harvey's alter-ego, but swirls all around him as he attempts to hold it back like the tone-deaf, out-of-condition superhero he is.

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On the receiving end of their surreal ribbing/bullying tonight are Waterloo Road's Mark Benton, the Mirror's own Tess Daly, Chris Packham and the fashionable Alexa Chung.

Conservationist Packham goes along with the joke - even after resident weirdo Angelos ­Epithemiou does ­something very unexpected to a robin.

Even team captain Jack Dee cracks a smile.

But poor Alexa looks like she wishes she'd stayed at home.

She might as well have done too - her contribution here is purely a decorative one.

Mr Blue Sky (Radio 4, yesterday) was billed as a "warm comedy" but as it drew towards its final episode it grew chillier, deeper. Mark Benton starred as the man in the title, husband, father, hopeless salesman with the infuriating habit (I know it's infuriating because I share it) of always looking on the bright "could-have-been-worse" side. His wife is flirting with the builder, his daughter has brought home a nightmare live-in boyfriend, his son has grievances, he loses his job. On top of all that he gets shot in the head then discovers he already has a potentially fatal aneurysm, about both of which he subsequently keeps silent. Funny? Well, yes. Andrew Collins, the writer, understands people. Anna Madley, for independents Avalon, let it be overplayed at first but brought it finally sailing home on a wing and a tear.