Reece Shearsmith

Psychoville episode three: 'Play me'

This week's episode sees several mysteries begin to unravel, as we learn more about Joy's spectacular breakdown and discover how Jelly ended up with a hook for a hand.

This week was a particularly dark episode, properly creepy. Turns out Mr Jolly did take Mr Jelly's right hand - in his former life as a surgeon. He amputated it at the wrist and then stole Mr Jelly's box of tricks (as it were), nicking his spot as a children's entertainer. Even more exciting, we finally found out what connects the characters. Well, sort of: taking the place of the mysterious notes they've been receiving was a video of what appeared to be some kind of mental institution: the millionaire who sold his eyes for a toy on eBay, the nurse who thinks her doll is a real child, the murderous mother and son, the lot, all engaging in some kind of strait-jacket exercise class: Breath in, breath out, and relax... Brrrr, creepy.

Coulrophobics beware: this episode features an exceptionally weird clown sequence in which Mr Jelly (Reece Shearsmith) is tried in "clown court" for bringing his profession into disrepute. His punishment appears, initially, to throw some light on what's happening in this increasingly bizarre (Christopher Biggins in a gold lamé codpiece is the least of it) black comedy but, true to form, the clue proves unreliable.

If you treat comedies as if they were skewed dramas, it doesn't matter too much whether or not they are funny. I'm not sure I wanted to laugh once during tonight's episode, but that didn't prevent it from being totally absorbing. As always, Psychoville consists of a succession of strange and disturbing scenes, each one more sinister than the last, linked together by a narrative that prevents it from degenerating into a sick sketch show. Tonight, the dwarf exacts his revenge on Cinderella. The disturbed midwife insists on force-feeding her unresponsive doll, and we discover how poor Mr Jelly lost his hand.

Hang the cost, we want rubbish clown Mr Jelly for our next birthday party - and we wouldn't mind if he flipped out. In fact, we'd pay extra for him to lose his rag and tell us how he lost his hand to arch-rival Mr Jolly. Then again, we could just hear his story in tonight's episode of this seriously creepy - but frighteningly good - comedy. Don't have nightmares, do sleep well...

Because this isn't your traditional sitcom - more a comedy thriller with an over-arching plotline - there's a problem. Traditional sitcoms can bring us variants on the same scenario each week and stay funny. Psychoville, though, with its serial story about a bunch of weirdos who all took part in some past horror (this week we discover from a home video that it may be connected with a sinister production of Joseph, performed in a medical institution) is different. Enjoyably different in most ways - gross, macabre, surreal - but it can't go back to square one each week. The plot has to keep moving forward or our attention wanders. There's a certain amount of wandering this week as we learn how Mr Jelly, the children's entertainer, lost his hand and his act to Mr Jolly. But their fight in a children's soft-play centre is inspired, while the Sowerbutts' breakfast habits are hilariously revolting.

It is possible to have too much macabre weirdness in one programme. Created, written and largely performed by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton from The League Of Gentlemen, Psychoville is an exercise in just how far you can push dark comedy.

To this end the pair have assembled a rogues gallery of grotesques, scattered them the length and breadth of the country, and set a mysterious blackmailer on their trail. "I know what you did," ran his first anonymous correspondence to the seemingly unconnected group and, without even knowing what they're accused of, you wouldn't put it past them.

Psychoville is definitely an acquired taste, and I'm afraid my appetite was sated halfway through the second episode, with the introduction of ghoulish conjoined twins with symmetrical facial blemishes. For me it was a case of two freaks too far.

It is very well done, atmospheric and beautifully performed, but the misanthropic tone of the humour is relentless and, after a while, a bit tedious. The introduction of a little shade would have been welcome, even different shades of black.

The macabre comedy gets funnier by the week, as we come to know more about the individual characters. Tonight, for example, we get Mr Jelly's backstory: how he wound up as an embittered, one-handed clown. Also, unhinged midwife Joy's husband George (Steve Pemberton) lets slip that his wife was once "put away". The most hilarious scenario of all, though, is when David Sowerbutts (Steve Pemberton) and his mum Maureen (Reece Shearsmith) dispatch their next victim disguised as beauticians. A must.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's eerie comedy just keeps getting better. That's largely because the plot, in the grotesque manner of a cockroach scuttling for safety across a kitchen floor after the light has been turned on, is accelerating. Tonight, that means a murder most horrid, backstory to explain the tension between Mr Jelly and Mr Jolly, a bidding war between Lomax and the Crabtree sisters, and the appearance of a video in the post. Worth watching just for the soft play pursuit scene.

I am having to watch Psychoville (BBC2) from behind the sofa, lest the equivalent of The League of Gentlemen's Papa Lazarou (the mere thought of whom is enough to have me weeping with fear) emerges. But it is corking stuff. Robert the dwarf has turned out to be telekinetic. Joy is feeding her baby on blood and punching anyone who dares to suggest that the infant strapped to her chest is in fact a doll, while the serial killer-obsessed David "I like strangles" Sowerbutts and his mother Maureen are about to fulfil what one can only assume is a lifelong dream by murdering someone. That's if they can agree on a method. "I like drills." "You're not doing that, I've got a thumping headache."

So far, I am managing to cope with both the one-handed, embittered clown Mr Jelly and the eyeless (not just blind, but eyeless, very, very eyeless) toy collector Mr Lomax, who has taken on Tea Leaf as an employee (contractual terms: "No girls, no smoking and no meat pies") to help him track down on eBay the one Beanie missing from his collection. I am rapidly approaching the limits of my endurance, yet fear we are nowhere near exhausting writers Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's appalling imaginations. I suspect that when the mysterious blackmailer who is stalking them is finally revealed, none of us will ever sleep soundly again.