Steve Pemberton

Steve Pemberton interview

Steve Pemberton talks about Inside No. 9, the lack of ambition on TV and how The League of Gentleman have permeated pop culture.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's Inside No. 9 (BBC Two) has been a deliciously twisted treat, each tale balancing neatly on a tightrope so you were never quite sure if we were about to make the leap into comedy or tragedy. But the final numerically themed short story was unashamedly macabre.

True, the odd defiantly bad joke ('Do you know Poe?' 'From the Teletubbies?') pierced the darkness as babysitter Katy turned up for work at a house which made the Addams Family homestead look light and airy. Yet this was a briefing for a descent into hell from which there could be no escape.

The twist being - in a series which has specialised in ingenious surprises - that there was no twist. You could call that daring but it actually felt like a bit of a cop-out, as though the dark-hearted Shearsmith and Pemberton were laughing at us: 'Ha! So you thought we'd left you off the hook.' I didn't quite buy the macabre self-indulgence. But the Devil's closing howl of 'mischief!' did give me the willies deep into the night. In that respect, job done.

Radio Times review

The last and nastiest visit to the ninth house on the left, which this episode is a looming, draughty pile out of place on a suburban street. Aimeé-Ffion Edwards, as excellent here as she was in Skin and Walking and Talking, is a schoolgirl babysitter who's been promised a bumper payday but immediately finds that the job, set by icy householder Helen McCrory, is too creepy to be worth the cash.

To say more would spoil, but as the creaking terror takes hold you'll marvel at how Steve Pemberton (absent) and Reece Shearsmith (in full Hammer horror mode) can pepper the elegant script with gags without breaking the spell.

Will there be a better comedy series in 2014? Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's twisted, and indeed twisty, tales are too dark for some viewers' blood, but they're the work of storytellers at the top of their game. Each self-contained episode slyly mixes silly jokes and proper horror. Start with the beautifully choreographed A Quiet Night In.

Inside No. 9, BBC2's dark comedy thriller series from half a League of Gents, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, who were also behind Psychoville, has been a critical hit but has not excelled in the ratings. Episodes have attracted a not-so-thrilling average of 800,000 viewers, but fans of the tales with a twist will be relieved to hear that a sequel has been commissioned. The decision was taken before the series was broadcast - if the number-crunchers had seen the figures maybe they would have had second thoughts. Catch the final edition, The Harrowing, with Helen McCrory guesting, on Wednesday.

Comedy doesn't come blacker than this. Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith cut loose in their series-concluding episode and produce a chilling half-hour that really is best avoided by those of a nervous disposition, as the announcers used to say. Schoolgirl Katy (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) arrives to babysit at a gothic mansion where there is no mobile phone signal, no heating and as it turns out, no baby. Hector (Shearsmith) and Tabitha (Helen McCrory) are the spooky siblings asking here to look after the place, which is also home to their infirm brother upstairs.

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's new comedy-horror anthology, which concludes Wednesday was always likely to have a hint of the macabre about it - these are the men who made Psychoville, after all. What we didn't expect was for Inside No. 9 to show such broad comic range: everything from drawing room farce to silent slapstick is attempted in the show's six episodes, and for the most part, very successfully. Tuck into the full comic smörgåsbord over on the iPlayer.

Its hard to know which to admire more - the rich and perverse imaginations of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, or the range of acting talents that has brought this strange and memorable series to life. The final episode is also the most Gothic. A sensible young woman goes to babysit in a refrigerated mansion while its owners, a most unusual brother and sister played by Shearsmith and Helen McCrory, are called away on an urgent matter. Upstairs lurks a bedridden brother who was born inside out. The story is called The Harrowing, named after Christ's descent into Hell to free imprisoned spirits. Babysitting doesn't get tougher than this.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton have strong opinions on the subject of stage actors, a theme they explore in this excellent instalment of their dark anthology series. Jim is understudy to Antony, a bellowing thesp. When Tony is drunk during "the Scottish play", Jim's fiance Laura urges him to take the lead, at which point the episode's satirical retelling of Macbeth becomes delightfully apparent. It's a spooky and highly satirical take on actors, Shakespeare and power - and of course, there's a twist in the tale.

Radio Times review

The biggest challenge Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton have set themselves, with this anthology of one-off dark comedies, has been pouring a new story into the pint pot that is half an hour of TV. They manage it with panache here, in another fable of the unforeseeable that gallops unerringly to a horrible conclusion.

Pemberton is a boorish, bitter stage actor taking the lead in the Scottish Play. He's dismissive of his co-stars, the audience and particularly his meek understudy Jim (Shearsmith). But Jim's fiancée isn't willing to let her other half stay stuck in the wings...

It's a magnificent meta-Macbeth, full of daggers before and spots that damn. Knowing the text will take you only halfway and, in any case, the clever plot is really just a vehicle for characters sketched fully in only a few lines, and a torrent of fruity luvvie gags about jealousy, superstition and stage-hogging hams. Delicious.