Steve Pemberton

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 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.

Inside No 9, ep 2.3 review: 'occasionally funny'

The third episode of series two fell some way short of what we have come to expect from Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith.

After a patchy debut last week, Inside No. 9 finally came into its own with its second episode entitled "The 12 Days of Christine". The Christine of the title is a shoe shop employee played by Sheridan Smith whose life story is told during the episode. Although each of the twelve days occurs chronologically, each scene represents a different year as Christine grows older as the piece goes on. During the episode we see her meet and marry the man of her dreams (Tom Riley), give birth, get divorced and turn thirty. However Reese Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton litter this seemingly mundane tale with their trademark macabre flair. During the episode Christine experiences several surreal moments and occasionally sees a man dressed in white (Shearsmith) breaking eggs around her home. There are several other odd moments including the fact that her dementia-suffering father often pops up seeming incredibly lucid. The final scene reveals exactly why the events of the episode are slightly skewed and the importance of the music played throughout. I'm not sure why both series of Inside No. 9 have had a brilliant second episode but "The 12 Days of Christine" is definitely up there with "A Quiet Night In". The fantastic Sheridan Smith steps out of her comfort zone to play a rapidly ageing character who never seems to quite know what's going on. I feel this thirty minute episode showcased Smith's range more than last year's three part series of Cilla. Meanwhile Pemberton and Shearsmith took secondary roles here, with the former playing Christine's gay best friend Bobby. I was completely entranced by both Smith's turn and Shearsmith and Pemberton's writing which offered up a number of twists and turns before the shocking final reveal. If you are yet to see an episode of Inside No. 9 I would heartily recommend "The 12 Days of Christine" as it's an easy watch with a fantastic if tragic conclusion.

Inside No. 9 - The 12 Days of Christine review

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's The 12 Days of Christine was revelatory, even for them.

Comedy, they say, is subjective. I compared the first story of the new series of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's Inside No. 9 with Chaucer's Prologue, thereby offending at least one reader who thought its "puerile humour" as "flatulent as its one-dimensional figures". If he hated last night's play, The 12 Days of Christine, it will be for different reasons. Humour did not really come into this dark tale, and if Pemberton played one of his usual sympathetic gay men, Sheridan Smith gave tragic depth to its central character, Christine.

It began with the camera focusing on a Christmas bauble, dully reflecting the intermittent flashes of the lights on its tree. Later, a flickering fluorescent light would extend the clue: this was a play, delivered in 12 fragments spaced over a decade, about a human memory's spasmodic grasp. The Saturnalian confusions of the first scene parodied what we would, by the end, realise was Christine's friable mental conditional.

It is New Year's Eve and she, dressed as a nun, is back from a party having copped off with a pretend fireman. The next scene, set on Valentine's Day, by which time she and Adam are an item, reveals she is a shoe-fitter, flat-sharing with an unsympathetic science student studying, as it happens, "measurable magnitudes".

As she and Adam's relationship progresses through marriage, sleepless parenthood, the death of her father and separation, Christine becomes half-convinced that she is being haunted by her goofy first boyfriend who, she has forgotten, died at the age of 16. Christine has, says her mother, a memory like a sieve. At this stage, the viewer will be more interested in the thought that Christine has deliberately blocked the lad out and that he has come back into her life seeking revenge. A crash in which Christine is injured appears later to have been caused by him walking in front of her car.

Shearsmith and Pemberton have long been interested in ghost stories, finding an affinity between their breaches of realism and comedy's transgressions. What is remarkable is they have used this trope and a troupe of comedy actors - notably the excellent Michele Dotrice, who plays Christine's mum - to make a serious statement about the supernatural. A haunting, it is strongly suggested, is a symptom of mental illness, in this caser early-onset dementia. Life for Christine has become a nightmare version of her favourite game: blind man's bluff.

The final scene is set again at Christmas, this time around a family table, in which all appears to have been restored. Adam and Christine are back together. Her Alzheimic father, who had died, is alive once more. She is presented with a book of photos, her life in pictures. She feels it "flashing by" - and with sudden, awful clarity, Christine works out what has happened. So do we. Her son returns from a nativity play dressed as an angel. Her favourite CD, Con te Partiro, strikes up, sung by an artist known for his physical rather than mental blindness.

This was a masterpiece, whether or not my interpretation is right (it could have been one long dying dream). It was shown on Maundy Thursday, presumably, only because, despite its Yule-like bookends, we would not have had the stomach for it at Christmas.