Inside No. 9

Opinion: Inside No 9, the all-time top six episodes

The new series of Inside No 9 starts on BBC2 on January 2 at 10pm. But what is your favourite episode out of the ones that have been broadcast so far?

The 20 best TV comedies of 2017

Here - in no particular order - are the 20 best shows from 2017.

50 best TV shows of 2017, #45: By turns the cleverest, funniest and nastiest thing on TV, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's miraculous anthology remained horribly underappreciated.

Inside No. 9 - a special anthology screening

I was lucky enough to attend this unique event at Sheffield's annual Celluloid Screams festival. Unique in that this was the first time Inside No.9 had been given the honour of a curated anthology screening. The three episodes - handpicked by the creators themselves - were all from the three series already broadcast, making it distinct from the BFI's two episode previews for each new series.

Witch trials, office karaoke, snuff films, party games, incestuous cannibalism: no subject matter is too terrible, or trivial, for Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's hair-raisingly inventive anthology series. With help from a rotating cast of acting aristocracy, The League of Gentlemen[/c duo have spent three series battering down the divisions between comedy, horror and drama. However, one episode towers above the rest: the Sheridan Smith-starring 12 Days of Christine is one of the most profoundly evocative half-hours of TV ever made.

Forget the cry-laugh: Inside No 9's creators perfected the vomit-laugh with an emetic twist in the season three episode The Riddle of the Sphinx. Pemberton's Cambridge don, after some already-nasty japes where a colleague (Shearsmith) forces him to eat flesh cut from the buttock of a just-murdered student (Alexandra Roach), is told that he is, in fact, her father. He's chewing his dead daughter's arse! Steve, Reece, get help. No, wait: finish season four. Then get help.

Inside No. 9, season 3 review

Where the writing really succeeds in Inside No. 9 is the slow unveiling of the characters' secrets.

Review: Inside No. 9

Inside No. 9 can be dramatic, comedic and genuinely terrifying: episodes quickly lurch from physical comedy and toilet gags to intense moments of drama or terror.

The ending that was cut from 'Diddle Diddle Dumpling'

In the DVD/blu-ray audio commentary for Inside No. 9 series three episode 'Diddle Diddle Dumpling', Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton reveal that the episode originally had a longer ending.