Steve Pemberton

If they could only write faster, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith could have a golden age all to themselves. After Psychoville, they have knocked out Inside No. 9, a series of short stories each set in a different No 9 and steeped in their trademark dark humour.

The third No 9 is a flat occupied by Shearsmith's Tom, a primary-school teacher, and Gerri, an actress played by the actress Gemma Arterton. Once you've got over the idea that someone as tall as Gerri would go out with someone as short as Tim, it's all perfectly plausible.

A tramp returns a wallet to Tom, Tom lets the tramp come in for a drink and the tramp takes over his life. Gerri movies out. Tom becomes a tramp. The tramp becomes Tom. Like the best of Roald Dahl, we've been lead, incrementally, plausibly, from a normal state of affairs to the unbelievably bizarre. I won't' tell you how it ends because it's till on iPlayer. Binge away.

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith focus their demonic gaze on celebrity worship and human greed. Tamsin Greig runs an outfit that makes dreams come true for sick children. If a little boy with cerebral palsy wants to play chees with Noel Edmonds, she will organise it. Here she arranges for the pop star Frankie J Parsons to come to the birthday party of a terminally ill little girl. After blowing up a balloon, he keels over - and the balloon filled with his dying breath is worth far more than the kidney stone sold by William Shatner for $25,000. "That's sick!" explains the appalled mother (Sophie Thompson). "The world is sick" replies her husband (Pemberton).

There was a point during the third of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's Inside No. 9 playlets when I thought Mind might be able to use this episode to teach insights into mental illness. The question was who was ill: Pemberton's tramp Migg who inveigled himself into Tom's flat or Tom, for letting him in? Soon Shearsmith's Tom was as psychologically homeless as Migg had been physically and rejecting all the kindness of a camp teacher colleague (the excellent Conleth Hill) who came bearing Body Shop vouchers. Would his girlfriend Gerri (Gemma Atherton return?

It was a distressing comedy to watch and, thanks to the body-in-the-bath ending, set back public awareness of mental health by at least half an hour. Its only redeeming qualities were the acting, the scripting, the satisfactions of one-act resolutions and the laughter it generated.

Episode three of the superb anthology series, and following the clownish antics of the last episode we're firmly back in Tales Of The Unexpected territory. Frustrated schoolteacher Tom (Reece Shearsmith) yearns to carve out a career as a writer, but finds his aspirations dampened by the need to support the acting career of his partner, Gerri (Gemma Arterton). A chance favour from a dishevelled stranger sets his life on a different, much darker path. The highlight of the series so far, with Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton on top form.

Less comic, more deep and dark, tonight's No.9 takes us to a flat occupied by teacher Tom (Reece Shearsmith) whose aspiring actress girlfriend Gerri (Gemma Arterton) is heading off for an audition when we drop by. It's the start of a game of cat and mouse, with Steve Pemberton as a homeless man who looms ever larger as the tale twists and doubles back on itself in sinister fashion. You'll want to press the replay button to search out the subtle signposts you missed along the way.

Radio Times review

The No 9 we visit this week is the flat of Tom (Reece Shearsmith), a primary school teacher whose disdain for hard work contrasts with his sunny, beautiful girlfriend Gerri (Gemma Arterton) and her efforts to make it as an actress. Tom keeps peeking scornfully out of the window at a homeless man in the street, until circumstance brings the vagrant, Migg (Steve Pemberton), into the flat while Gerri's away on a job. The gimmick of the show is that we never leave No 9, and maybe the persuasive Migg won't, either.

By halfway you'll have confidently announced where it's going, but Shearsmith and Pemberton give their story of how we're all one slip away from the gutter a chilling sense of rising dread. Nobody plays wicked games with the audience more skilfully.

Inside No. 9 looked at life behind closed doors. After last week's silent-movie hijinks, it was back into the darker recesses of its creators' psyches.

It's always trepidatious when Reece Shearsmith dons the clothes of an ordinary man - something wicked this way comes.

Here we started with Tom, a clean-cut primary school teacher, and his girlfriend (Gemma Arterton). Tom rapidly descended into an almighty funk with the help of a homeless man called Migg (Steve Pemberton).

What began as a study into the unspoken horror of Tom letting the filthy Migg into his house, took a turn for the darker as Migg slowly imbibed Tom's spirit. Or did he? The timing of the "twist" that he didn't actually exist suggested early on that there might be more to come and there was.

This third episode wasn't really in the slightest bit funny, but that's no complaint - I found myself moved by its sad brilliance. Its ambiguity about Tom's state of mind a fine - if cartoonish - take on mental illness. It also featured the glorious line: "You're not Charles Bukowski, you're just a primary school teacher who had a nervous breakdown." So that's one laugh, at least.

Who would have guessed, a generation ago, that in the year 2014 we sophisticated, endlessly demanding television viewers would be falling about laughing over a silent (or at least wordless) comedy starring somebody called Chaplin? The comedy series Inside No. 9 is the creation of The League of Gentlemen duo Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. The second in the series was A Quiet Night In, one of the cleverest and funniest things I've seen on telly for years. It featured Oona Chaplin, the 27-year-old grand-daughter of Charlie Chaplin. She says she thinks he would have approved of the show. I'm sure he would have loved it, not just for Oona's appearance but to see Pemberton and Shearsmith's split-second timing, as perfected by the Master 100 years ago.

It is amazing what can be achieved in half an hour with just a great script, an excellent cast and a large wardrobe. Written by and starring Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, Inside No. 9 is a series of self-contained comedy dramas set in buildings or spaces numbered nine.

Episode one set a very high standard indeed, with an exquisitely crafted tale of jealousy, revenge, ambition, snobbery and murder centred around a country house game of sardines. With each new player discovering the hiding place, the wardrobe fills not only with bodies, but also hidden agendas, strained relationships, sinister backstories and rancid sweat (one eager participant, Smelly John, hadn't washed since he was a teenager).

No review of Shearsmith and Pemberton's work is complete without the adjectives dark and comic getting a mention, and I'm not about to break with tradition. But Inside No. 9 also offered poignancy, tension, intelligence, horror and several surprises. The lean, mean narrative didn't just twist and turn, it folded back upon itself to provide a totally unexpected, profoundly disturbing and deeply satisfying denouement. Even Smelly John's personal hygiene problem was revealed to be integral to the plot, rather than a mere comedy contrivance.

The writers also put in great performances as a bickering gay couple, supported by an impressively stellar cast that included Timothy West, Anna Chancellor, Marc Wootton and Anne Reid.

Ridiculous though it may sound, it is almost a relief to watch an episode of this inspired series that doesn't knock you off your perch. At least it gives you a chance to draw breath. A neat & prissy primary school teacher (Reece Shearsmith) with aspirations to be a writer finds himself having an encounter of the most unwelcome kind with a tramp (Steve Pemberton). The tramp has an eerie resemblance to the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz - only not nearly as benign. "It's nice to talk to a fellow human", says the tramp. "It makes me feel like I exist". It is a sinister tale about the fragile nature of sanity performed by actors who are frighteningly good.