Tim Key

Tim Key interview: A slut in the bedroom

We get into bed with the Edinburgh Comedy Award award-winning poet ahead of his new show, Single White Slut.

Tim Key introduces a poem you can personalise

The multi award-winner pens a poem exclusively for Time Out.

Inside No. 9, the new series from League of Gentlemen and Psychoville creators Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, is steeped in a love of shows like Tales Of The Unexpected and Twilight Zone.

Those classic series, like BBC2's Inside No. 9, featured standalone stories each week - most of which had a heart of darkness and ended with a ghoulish twist.

One of my earliest TV memories was watching a Tales Of The Unexpected episode called 'Lamb To The Slaughter' in which a housewife bludgeons her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then feeds the investigating detectives the cooked murder weapon. Totally inappropriate for an eight-year-old to be allowed to watch, of course, but that's what babysitters are for.

Combining jet-black humour and the macabre is something Shearsmith and Pemberton are obviously masters of, and the first episode - called Sardines - had just enough of both to make it a joy to watch. The name refers to the party game in which guests play hide and seek and the 'finder' has to join the 'hider'.

In this case the party guests - including Anne Reid, Katherine Parkinson, Tim Key and Timothy West - all found themselves hiding in an old Victorian wardrobe.

Despite such a simple conceit (almost all of the episode took place within the confines of the wardrobe) Shearsmith and Pemberton still managed to inject the story with their trademark creepiness and dread.

They lured us in with oddball characters to laugh at but then landed a sucker punch of a finale that came with a murderous twist and allusions to paedophilia.

The freedom of anthology shows such as this allows the stories to go literally anywhere - and with Shearsmith and Pemberton at the helm, that's a scary but mouth-watering prospect.

Review: Inside No. 9, BBC Two

There was much to enjoy in beautifully nuanced performances, particularly by Tim Key and Katherine Parkinson.

Radio Times review

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith return. If their last macabre comedy drama, Psychoville, was slightly weighed down by servicing a tricky overarching storyline, there's no such problem here since this is a series of one-offs, set in a variety of homes that all happen to be number nine on their street.

The opener is confined not just to a house, but to one room in a fusty old family mansion. And mostly, we're in the wardrobe: two grown-up siblings who used to live here (Pemberton and Katherine Parkinson) are celebrating her engagement with a party - and a game of sardines. As more guests squeeze in, everyone gets less and less comfortable, until the bickering turns to bile.

It's a vicious little one-act, one-room play, deftly staged and superbly acted by a cast that also includes Anne Reid, Anna Chancellor, Timothy West and Tim Key.

The best comedy gigs of 2013

Alexei Sayle, Russell Brand, Bridget Christie, The Pin and Tim Key showed us the funny this year.

This week's new live comedy

Previews of Tim Key, Sarah Millican and Russell Brand.

Daniel Kitson teams up with Tim Key for new show

Daniel Kitson is to team up with Tim Key for his new show this Autumn at the Manchester Royal Exchange. The show will be called Tree and is written and directed by Kitson.

Latitude comedy review: stand-up takes over festival

Huge crowds for sets by Tim Key, Dylan Moran and others show how popular comedy is at music festivals; no wonder standup was spilling out all over the site this year.

Comedy review: Rob Auton: The Yellow Show

Rob Auton, 30, is a talent to watch - a poet/ comedian/ illustrator, who combines the whimsical appeal of early Josie Long and the lo-fi artistry of Sam Fletcher with a hint of the menace of Tim Key.