Inside No. 9

Inside No. 9, 2.5 - 'Nana's Party'

Like so many Middle England suburban comedies, it was all about the depths and heartaches lurking beneath apparently happy families, and on that score this episode really worked.

A slightly sinister man (Reece Shearsmith) acts as the host of a séance. He ushers an innocent young girl into a stuffy room filled with Victoriana and then introduces her to Madame Talbot the medium (Alison Steadman).

Madame Talbot is shrouded from head to toe in black. Her eyes are white with cataracts. She carries one of those spooky dolls with an ivory face that she treats as if it were a real child. Spiritualist vapour pours out of her mouth like mist from an electronic cigarette, and while the lights flicker her voice alternates between a sweet little-odd-lady squeak and a diabolical, growl. And that is as much as I can say for fear of being savaged by a blue dwarf.

Alison Steadman and Sophie McShera (scullery maid Daisy in Downton Abbey) star in the final episode of this series. The action occurs in a vast gothic building where a séance is about to take place.

Tina (McShera) turns up for her session and admits she hasn't lost anyone, but she is 'curious'. Madam Talbot, brilliantly played by Steadman, replies: 'The curious are often drawn here for a glimpse of summerland'. What ensues is chilling and hilarious in equal measure and the final twist is superb. Let's hope Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith bring us a third series.

Inside No. 9, Nana's Party, TV review

League of Gentleman's Reece Shearsmith steals the show in this very clever drama.

With each show being a stand-alone story, Inside No. 9 has been hit and miss. Last night's, "Nana's Party", showed a family unravelling as secrets were revealed at a birthday bash for an elderly relative.

Angela and Jim were a typical middle-aged suburban couple. Angela (played by Claire Skinner -- best known as the mum in Outnumbered) kept an immaculate home and spoke with an affected posh accent. Jim spent the majority of his time locked in his shed.

Only when Angela's brassy, alcoholic sister Carol turned up with her practical joker husband Pat did the secrets start to spill.

The party turned to farce with flatulent Nana choking on ice cubes and a strippergram arriving as drunken Carol blurted out the revelation of her affair with Jim.

Anybody used to the work of the show's writers and stars, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, will know their comedy always comes with a side order of pathos and weirdness. It doesn't always work but last night it mostly did.

Inside No. 9 season 2 episode 5 review: 'Nana's Party'

Last week, we spoke about Shearsmith and Pemberton's fascination with the quiet desperation of everyday banality. This episode takes that to the hilt - the hilt of a very big knife, in fact.

To a suburban semi, where Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have gone a bit Mike Leigh. It's Nana's birthday party, thrown by Angela (Claire Skinner), the more successful of her two daughters. Into a house kept pristine by Angela's crippling OCD blows bitter dipsomaniac Carol (Lorraine Ashbourne). Pemberton and Shearsmith are the golf-sweatered husbands waging a cold war via practical jokes. As one prank blows up a mass of secrets, the script slides effortlessly from funny to dark to desperately sad.

Radio Times review

The praise lavished upon this anthology series from viewers and TV critics alike is justly deserved, and this episode is another cracker. In Nana's Party, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith (writing and directing) play prankster brothers-in-law who, with their wives (Claire Skinner as an OCD mum and Lorraine Ashbourne as her alcoholic sister), gather for Maggie's 79th birthday. Cue another delightfully ditsy turn from Benidorm's Elsie Kelly.

The half-hour unfolds like a micro-packaged Mike Leigh drama, with finely judged performances as secrets and lies are exposed in cosy suburbia. All it's lacking is Timothy Spall grunting.

TV preview: Inside No. 9, Nana's Party, BBC2

Don't bother trying to do a Columbo and second-guess what is in store. Needless to say the normal setting makes what occurs all the more disquieting.

Review: Inside No. 9, Nana's Party

Like series opener La Couchette, Nana's Party is steeped in the old Sartre sentiment; "Hell is other people."