Inside No. 9

Review 2018: Top TV 2018

I don't know what it says about the times we are living in but comedy seems to have slipped into all sorts of programmes this year. I've kept my choices to more traditional comedies.

If the nifty writing was the star of previous episode Zanzibar, this one was a showcase for performance. Not just from Steve Pemberton, who gave us all manner of vintage comedy 'bits', but also from Reece Shearsmith. [...]

This terrific episode was empathetic, moving, and entertaining throughout. The mystery over just what occurred in Bernie Clifton's dressing room gently pulled us through the first half, while the emotion took over in the second. Topping it all off with that glorious Morecambe and Wise-style song and dance number ("Misery might let you win a Bafta..." touché) was an additional treat. The previous episode had a large cast and dialogue going a mile a minute, but this two-hander felt no less full.

It would have been impressive enough if Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton had merely followed through with their promise of a live version of their superlative comedy horror anthology series. Instead they chose to take a chainsaw to the entire concept of the live episode itself and produced the year's outstanding half hour of TV in the process. Dead Line began as a creaky TV play about a misunderstanding over a missing phone, but then the "technical difficulties" started, with the programmes' sound and vision flickering intermittently. Many assumed that it was a Beeb balls-up and switched off, but those who stuck around were treated to a deliciously meta-horror story based on rumours of evil spirits haunting the old Granada studios - all told completely live, of course. In a year where - between Bodyguard, the World Cup and Love Island - appointment TV's return was widely trumpeted, this was one occasion when you really "had to be there".

Inside No.9 review: Halloween special: 'Dead Line'

The way it was done, the sheer audacity of the whole thing left one almost open-mouthed in admiration and amazement.

Reece Shearsmith not actually dead!

Inside No. 9 co-star Reece Shearsmith has tweeted for the first time since the live episode of the award-winning series went out at the end of October when he "died".

Inside No. 9 Live: staging a Halloween prank

Executive producer Adam Tandy lifts the lid on the delicate staging of an elaborate hoax.

Inside No. 9: the road to devilish deception

Where did The Sun and their quoted source, The Daily Star, get the Inside No. 9 Granada Studios story? Is it possible they were fed it as part of the show's mischief...

Inside No. 9's live episode was exceptionally clever

Television history, urban myth, horror tradition, all bound together and delivered at a breakneck pace through live television.