Steve Pemberton

Review: Inside No. 9. Episode 2.1 - 'La Couchette'

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton are exceptional storytellers, their writing is ingenious, incisive and full of telling detail. The intricacies in their work are deployed to tell a good story & tell it as well as possible.

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.

Video: Shearsmith & Pemberton reveal No. 9's TV talent

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith (The League of Gentleman) return with a new series of cult black comedy Inside No. 9 tonight, but while they wrote all six episodes, they certainly aren't the stars of the show as they told us.

Inside No 9 is back - and it's as creepy as ever

Ben Dowell meets Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton to discuss the return of their unsettling "comedy".

Inside Number 9 review: 'deliciously wicked'

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton gave us a ruthless dissection of human foibles, from an attempt to open a zip as quietly as possible to, well, murder.

League duo open door to Inside No 9

League of Gentleman and Psychoville duo Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton are looking relaxed ahead of the second series of their dark comedy Inside No 9.

Last year A Quiet Night In, the second and silent instalment of this series, garnered much deserved praise, but every one of these six modern tales of the unexpected were vignettes of cunning precision. Every word, every line, lifted the curtain a smidgeon more, although what the curtain obscured thwarted where our expectations had led us. Few write with such disguised economy, or catch us as unawares, as this pair.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's jocular devilry and creeping terror returns for this new run with La Couchette, where the occupants of sleeping berth number nine endure a terrible night's sleep. By contrast next week's standalone film, The 12 Days of Christine, is as haunting a piece of TV you'll watch this year.

The dark imaginations of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith are back with six more self-contained, bleakly comic dramas set in different locations, all of which have a No 9 on the door.

Tonight's opener has echoes of the very first episode of all, in which a diverse assortment of characters at a country house squeezed into a cupboard during a game of sardines. The difference here is that the characters - an anally retentive doctor, a flatulent German, a British couple on the way to their daughter's wedding, a rude Australian backpacker et al - squeeze into a tiny couchette on a train out of Paris. You may think you know where it is headed, but don't be so sure...