Timothy West

Prunella Scales' 'heartbreaking' Alzheimer's hell

When actor Timothy West had EastEnders fans in tears as he played out the fading moments of Stan Carter, he had his own very raw emotions to draw on. For every day he reflects on cherished moments of his own 52-year marriage to actress Prunella Scales that only he can remember.

Radio Times review

This was the rarest of comic beasts: half a dozen standalone episodes with jokes that weren't laid out on a plate, but instead jumped out from corners or tripped you up during awkward pauses. It was written by League of Gentlemen alumni Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and performed by them in various guises alongside the likes of Timothy West, Helen McCrory and Gemma Arterton. It was dark, of course, but otherwise deliciously unpredictable: the first was about an uncomfortable engagement party; the second was a silent comedy with slapstick from Charlie Chaplin's great-granddaughter, Oona.

Prunella Scales suffering from mild Alzheimer's

The husband of Fawlty Towers star Prunella Scales, actor Timothy West, talks about wife's condition in a More4 documentary.

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.

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.

It has been a long march for The League Of Gentlemen's Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith since their original (very original) TV series in 1999. With each subsequent venture they have scrambled farther over the top. Inside No. 9, a series of one-off plays each taking place at a different address starting with 9, represents a retreat to firmer ground.

Last night's debut was much less fantastical than their last series Psychoville, free of prosthetics and cross-dressing. It dealt, as per, with incest and abuse, but in the manner that Alan Ayckbourn might. The Greek ruled that plays should take place over a single day in a single place. Sardines occurred over half an hour in a single wardrobe. It occupied a wall in an outsized family house, the scene of uptight daughter Rebecca's engagement party. Childhood momentum had propelled her and brother Carl (Pemberton), a man barely out of the closet and about to enter a wardrobe, into a game of sardines that no one wanted to play.

Katherine Parkinson's Rebecca was a superb study in congenital dissatisfaction, about to marry a man whose previous lover is not only still on his mind but in the wardrobe. The whole party ends up in there, including the dull, quiet one (beware the dull, quiet ones, they are usually the writers' surrogates). It is Carl, though, who outs the elephant in the wardrobe, a sexual assault on a child by his bullying father: "I was teaching the boy how to wash himself!" responds the father.

Anne Reid, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Anna Chancellor must have so enjoyed getting dialogue in which each sentence was minutely crafted for them. My favourite line may even have come from Timothy West as the patriarch complaining at a transgressing of sardine rules: "This isn't hide-and-go-seek". Was that posh for "hide and seek" or a unique verbal corruption?

Sardines was a disciplined comedy, but a little bit of discipline, as one of the League's perverts might say, never did anyone any harm. Save for the Tales of the Unexpected twist, I loved it.

First in an anthology squeezed from the brains of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, with each darkly diverse tale unfolding within a different residence numbered nine. In this opener, which features Katherine Parkinson, Anne Reid and Timothy West, a country manor hosts an uncomfortable game of sardines between a family long since grown apart. A slow burner compared with the episodes that follow, but a decent introduction to a series stylistically similar to criminally disregarded Dawn French vehicle Murder Most Horrid.

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.

Inside No. 9 is magnificent. It is the latest series to emerge from the dark imaginations of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, the pair who were also responsible for Psychoville & The League of Gentlemen (with Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson).

Their new series consists of six self-contained, bleakly comic dramas set in six very different No 9s, ranging from a suburban home to a country pile. Like all the best short stories or one-act plays, tonight's episode works with a deceptive and outrageous simplicity. A group of characters are playing a game of sardines. One after the other, they squeeze into a cupboard. Some are partners. Some are engaged. Some are work colleagues. Some have ugly histories in common, and one is a stranger to hygiene. Between them, they cover a wide variety of social backgrounds, sexual orientations and age groups. If a bomb dropped on the cupboard where they were hiding, a good portion of the acting talent in this country would be wiped out.

The high quality ensemble includes Anne Reid, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Katherine Parkinson, Anna Chancellor and Timothy West, all of whom squeeze in alongside Pemberton and Shearsmith. However, this isn't just an inspired set-up performed by a stellar cast, it builds to a macabre and horribly imagined climax.

For a comedian, television can be both a blessing and a curse. Strike it lucky - land your own series, for example - and it can feel as though the sky's the limit. But stick around too long - or, worse, lose your cutting edge - and you can easily find yourself in the wilderness.

What's encouraging about the return of this sketch show, featuring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, is that it's brought the best out of two long-established comics who many may have felt were past their peak.

Not every sketch hits the mark - they never do - but by the end of the 30 minutes you'll certainly be forgiving Whitehouse for those appalling insurance ads. Well, almost. Look out for guest appearances from Charlie Higson, Simon Day and Timothy West.