Inside No. 9

Radio Times review

More warped brilliance from the minds of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, Cold Comfort is set at a branch of Comfort Support Line as volunteer Andy (Pemberton) starts his first day listening to tales of woe from random callers. It unfolds almost entirely via footage from a fixed camera in booth nine, with other CCTV angles, increasingly important, displayed split-screen on the side. Jane Horrocks plays the snarky Liz, sitting in the booth behind, while Shearsmith is their uptight overseer.

As the calls get bleaker and Andy's sympathetic nature is sorely tested, any real helpline volunteers watching this episode may well wince, but it remains gripping throughout. And there's a creepy pay-off.

Review: Inside No. 9, Cold Comfort

We're treated to a new perspective for this week's Inside No. 9, as we watch its grimly funny yarn spin out through security footage.

TV preview: Inside No. 9 - Cold Comfort, BBC2

It's the CCTV that gives this episode its haunting flavour.

Inside No, 9, witch trials and laughing in church

Laughter, when held back for the sake of politeness, or out of respect or fear of a sombre occasion is the most potent laughter I know of.

Inside No. 9 - The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge review

It's the most overtly comic of the series so far, but crucially, and what makes it work so brilliantly, is the serious tone of the piece.

Cold Comfort. Today is Andy's first day as a volunteer at the Comfort Support Line's call centre, but serval big surprises await him in the land of the lonely and the desperate. Could it really be true that, as his fellow counsellor Liz confides, "the volunteers are more fucked up than the people ringing in"? Another expertly crafted comic treasure. Don't miss it.

The latest in Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's superb second series of unsettling playlets, this centres around the volunteers art a Samaritans-like helpline and the newest recruit, Andy (Pemberton), who starts to receive regular calls from the mysterious Chloe. She is a troubled teenager, but is there more to her rants about an unhappy home life and threats to overdose? It co-stars Jane Horrocks, on fine form as another volunteer and the drama is shot to look as though it is being picked up on security cameras, which provides very effective for the denouement. Another corker.

Having produced two small masterpieces in a row, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have set an impossibly high standard for themselves and it's only fair they should be allowed a breather. In tonight's episode, a volunteer (Pemberton) has joined a Samaritans-type call centre called Comfort Support Line. "Whatever the caller wants to talk about," says his boss (Shearsmith), "we offer active listening." There are two volunteers (Jane Horrocks and Nikki Amuka-Bird) who loathe one another, and the boss may be more disturbed than any of the callers. It's a promising set-up, but the episode doesn't unfold with the same simple, logical elegance as others in the series.

Review: Inside No. 9 - 'The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge'

Entertaining fare, but too predictable and clichéd to prove genuinely memorable.

Pity Elizabeth Gadge (Ruth Sheen). After being accused of consorting with the devil, she has to face two of England's most feared witch-finders, Clarke and Warren (Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith). She faces being burned at the stake, and her trial is the most exciting event in Little Happens since "the escaped cow". What unfolds, as the anthology series continues, is essentially a Hammer Horror played for laughs. As dimwitted local bigwig Sir Andrew Pike, David Warner quite brilliantly makes the most of every line he's given.