Reece Shearsmith

Psychoville wasn't in a League of its own Read more: h

The second series of Psychoville has just finished its run on BBC Two. It was deftly written, wonderfully performed and elegantly made. It was funny, it was engrossing, it was all-round impressive. And so its makers, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, are probably a bit hacked off that viewing figures fell away so sharply as the series went on.

The second and, by all accounts, final series of Psychoville draws to a close tonight. While it has a wonderfully twisting (and twisted) plot, it's in the details that this has impressed the most. Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith throw in pick'n'mix influences from Hammer horror, 50s schlock sci-fi, Lindsay Anderson's Britannia Hospital and much more. The secret of the locket is finally revealed - but who, in a show that has seemingly been intent on killing everyone off this series, will still be around to see it?

"I hate London. It's full of weirdos," says Mr Jelly, arriving at St Pancras station with Mrs Ladybird-Face and the head of a Nazi in an icebox. The tone is set for a superb finale that delivers on every count. It's hilarious, audacious, gruesome; the villains you loathe get their comeuppance, and villains you love may live to fight another day... While David Sowerbutts finds love at his lowest ebb and Jeremy Goode succumbs to the Silent Singer, events centre round company Andrews-nanotech and its director Grace (glammed up Imelda Staunton). At last she takes possession of the series' MacGuffin - Kenchington's locket. It's hard to guess where Psychoville can go from here, but let's hope the warped brilliance of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith will find a way.

Murderous Maureen is on her last legs, but slow-witted son David has misremembered the one thing she'd like to do before she dies. It's not wine tasting in France. Mr Jelly, the misanthropic clown, has a makeover to become Mr Jolly and makes a disturbing discovery in Jolly's vault. We also learn that obsessive librarian Jeremy has an unexpected link to Ravenhill Hospital. This is perhaps the blackest instalment yet, with corpses and dismembered body parts piling up. The laughs may be diminishing, but Psychoville remains stylishly crafted and exquisitely performed. Just as in The League of Gentlemen, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton manage to invest even their vilest characters with fl ashes of pathos. And who could resist another dose (in flashback) of Eileen Atkins as tyrannical Nurse Kenchington?

"Three ex-Ravenhill patients dead in the same month Coincidence? I don't think so," says Hoyti Toyti shopkeeper Peter (a swishingly camp turn from Jason Watkins, who played Herrick in Being Human). He's soon on the scent of the assassin and sharing with Tealeaf (Daniel Kaluuya) a dark secret in his shop basement. So the plot tightens in this dance of the macabre, where there's dubious pleasure in watching just how far Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton will go in testing their audience's bad taste threshold. A literal bloodbath involving Maureen Sowerbutts, a Haringey social worker, a breadknife and bin liners makes for queasy but irresistible viewing. A sequence with Mr Jelly and David running amok in a home for the bewildered achieves high farce. Hattie (Pemberton in pink lippy) turning all Kathy Bates in Misery and forcing a snog on gay hubby Shahrouz should make some punters squirm, but it was her crass remarks to a rape victim that ultimately crossed the line for me. Still, full marks for audacity.

Yeah, it's really good. It's excellent. Some people have an issue, however, with Reece Shearsmith's voice. We have had three separate people send us correspondence on this very topic. And then the cookdandbombd comedy podcast went on about it too. Seems odd. We like Reece Shearsmith, particularly his librarian here.

A pattern is emerging in this second series as it ruthlessly bumps off one key character per episode, but whose number is up tonight? A trip to a vintage toy emporium, Hoyti Toyti, takes warty Mr Lomax's obsession with Tony Hancock to another level. Homicidal David Sowerbutts makes a deadly pact à la Strangers on a Train, and misanthropic clown Mr Jelly walks into a gruesome Dirty Pretty Things scenario. Yes, the deft movie pastiches continue unabated. The newer characters see disturbing action, too. Librarian Jeremy (Reece Shearsmith) is still hung up on an overdue reference book and bedevilled by the freakish Silent Singer, while extreme fag hag Hattie gets her claws into gay Iranian Shahrouz. Is it just me or is Steve Pemberton channelling Corrie's Deirdre Barlow here?

An interview with Reece Shearsmith

Reece Shearsmith is probably (definitely) best known for his work as one of The League of Gentlemen, a paradoxically popular cult show which has been on stage, radio, and television.

This is manna for lovers of the macabre - a shudder one minute, a cackle the next. Steve Pemberton's new character Hattie (surely a blood relation of The League of Gentlemen's Pauline) seizes her opportunity at a sham wedding, while Pemberton's Benidorm chum Sheila Reid shows up as another witchy gran, with designs on poor Tommy. The Sowerbutts plan a dinner party from hell, willing anaphylaxis upon shifty, peanut-sensitive Robin (David Bamber); Maureen (Reece Shearsmith) also subjects her guests to a party piece, which is, well, "simply the best!" Shearsmith is great too, without all the hideous make-up, as beyond-anal librarian Jeremy who sees David Lynch-ian phantoms between the bookcases - and stay alert for a cameo from another cult movie director, John Landis.