Reece Shearsmith

Inside No 9 Review: Cold Comfort

Cold Comfort sees Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's dark imaginations at full rein, with brilliant technical innovations that help to invoke the story's mundane setting, enhance its narrative themes and draw out the intricate layers of the script.

The penultimate stand-alone playlet in Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's brilliantly chilly series starts with an ambulance skidding to a halt outside a house as the occupants scream for help; then we flash back to the start of the day as the family prepares for a party.

Reece Shearsmith plays an insufferable booby with a fondness for practical jokes and Steve Pemberton is his weary nemesis. Claire Skinner is the dutiful, obsessively tidy wife about to have her plans significantly changed.

Another perfectly judged high-wire walk: comedy and tragedy balanced evenly and artfully at all times.

Although every single episode in this series is completely different, somehow Messrs Pemberton and Shearsmith manage to score one bullseye after another. In tonight's episode, a stressed-out daughter (Claire Skinner) invites her mother (Elsie Kelly) over to celebrate her 79th birthday party. The other guests are an alcoholic sister (Lorraine Ashbourne) and her appalling husband (Reece Shearsmith), and it degenerates into the birthday party from hell. And while the inferno is raging all around her, Granny sits there smiling, endlessly reciting the joke on her birthday card or playing games on her granddaughter's iPad. Imagine a more twisted version of Abigail's Party.

After some star-studded shows, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith dial back the celebrity guests for tonight's episode, set in a Samaritans-like call centre. Shot on time-coded CCTV, the episode has the tools to ratchet up the suspense, as volunteer Andy (Pemberton) is drawn into both the dramas of his callers and the tensions of his workplace, as managed by supervisor George (Shearsmith). Ultimately, though, the story lacks both the plausibility and element of surprise that characterise the best of this series.

Radio Times review

More warped brilliance from the minds of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, Cold Comfort is set at a branch of Comfort Support Line as volunteer Andy (Pemberton) starts his first day listening to tales of woe from random callers. It unfolds almost entirely via footage from a fixed camera in booth nine, with other CCTV angles, increasingly important, displayed split-screen on the side. Jane Horrocks plays the snarky Liz, sitting in the booth behind, while Shearsmith is their uptight overseer.

As the calls get bleaker and Andy's sympathetic nature is sorely tested, any real helpline volunteers watching this episode may well wince, but it remains gripping throughout. And there's a creepy pay-off.

The Casebook of Max and Ivan is a new, daft comedy series from Max Olesker and Iván González that boasts some top supporting talent (June Whitfield in the first episode, Reece Shearsmith, Matt Lucas and Jessica Hynes coming up). It's a sprightly, silly show that reminds me a little bit of Milton Jones (though not as surreal), and when everyone calms down a bit, it'll be very good.

The latest in Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's superb second series of unsettling playlets, this centres around the volunteers art a Samaritans-like helpline and the newest recruit, Andy (Pemberton), who starts to receive regular calls from the mysterious Chloe. She is a troubled teenager, but is there more to her rants about an unhappy home life and threats to overdose? It co-stars Jane Horrocks, on fine form as another volunteer and the drama is shot to look as though it is being picked up on security cameras, which provides very effective for the denouement. Another corker.

Having produced two small masterpieces in a row, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have set an impossibly high standard for themselves and it's only fair they should be allowed a breather. In tonight's episode, a volunteer (Pemberton) has joined a Samaritans-type call centre called Comfort Support Line. "Whatever the caller wants to talk about," says his boss (Shearsmith), "we offer active listening." There are two volunteers (Jane Horrocks and Nikki Amuka-Bird) who loathe one another, and the boss may be more disturbed than any of the callers. It's a promising set-up, but the episode doesn't unfold with the same simple, logical elegance as others in the series.

Pity Elizabeth Gadge (Ruth Sheen). After being accused of consorting with the devil, she has to face two of England's most feared witch-finders, Clarke and Warren (Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith). She faces being burned at the stake, and her trial is the most exciting event in Little Happens since "the escaped cow". What unfolds, as the anthology series continues, is essentially a Hammer Horror played for laughs. As dimwitted local bigwig Sir Andrew Pike, David Warner quite brilliantly makes the most of every line he's given.

Radio Times review

We're back in the 17th century for the trial of Elizabeth Gadge (Mike Leigh favourite Ruth Sheen), an old crone accused of witchcraft by her own flesh and blood. The trial bodes well for local bigwig Sir Andrew Pike (David Warner), keen to attract visitors to the dismal village of Little Happens, whose sole attractions hitherto have been the green, a duck and a bench. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton play dual witchfinders, Mr Warren and Mr Clarke. (See what they did there?)

The loose anthology format certainly allows them to indulge their passions and peccadillos, here mining the Vincent Price classic, Witchfinder General, for flavour and chuckles. From the start, the arch performances call to mind a League of Gentlemen sketch where they dismissed a DVD movie for having "too much actinggg", but this dark tale soon works a devilish spell.