Inside No. 9

Inside No. 9 series 2 episode 3 review

Shearsmith and Pemberton transport us to the 17th century for a witch trial this week in an episode high on quotability and absurdity...

Inside No 9, ep 2.3 review: 'occasionally funny'

The third episode of series two fell some way short of what we have come to expect from Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith.

After a patchy debut last week, Inside No. 9 finally came into its own with its second episode entitled "The 12 Days of Christine". The Christine of the title is a shoe shop employee played by Sheridan Smith whose life story is told during the episode. Although each of the twelve days occurs chronologically, each scene represents a different year as Christine grows older as the piece goes on. During the episode we see her meet and marry the man of her dreams (Tom Riley), give birth, get divorced and turn thirty. However Reese Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton litter this seemingly mundane tale with their trademark macabre flair. During the episode Christine experiences several surreal moments and occasionally sees a man dressed in white (Shearsmith) breaking eggs around her home. There are several other odd moments including the fact that her dementia-suffering father often pops up seeming incredibly lucid. The final scene reveals exactly why the events of the episode are slightly skewed and the importance of the music played throughout. I'm not sure why both series of Inside No. 9 have had a brilliant second episode but "The 12 Days of Christine" is definitely up there with "A Quiet Night In". The fantastic Sheridan Smith steps out of her comfort zone to play a rapidly ageing character who never seems to quite know what's going on. I feel this thirty minute episode showcased Smith's range more than last year's three part series of Cilla. Meanwhile Pemberton and Shearsmith took secondary roles here, with the former playing Christine's gay best friend Bobby. I was completely entranced by both Smith's turn and Shearsmith and Pemberton's writing which offered up a number of twists and turns before the shocking final reveal. If you are yet to see an episode of Inside No. 9 I would heartily recommend "The 12 Days of Christine" as it's an easy watch with a fantastic if tragic conclusion.

Inside No. 9 - The 12 Days of Christine review

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's The 12 Days of Christine was revelatory, even for them.

Reece Shearsmith on his dark comedy Inside No. 9

An interview with Reece Shearsmith about comedy dram series Inside No. 9.

Last week's episode was typically clever, but this week's is unmissably good. Sheridan Smith stars as Christine, an ordinary woman living out her (apparently) ordinary life in flat number 9. Births, deaths and marriages keep us too engaged to wonder where it's all going, until, finally it's too late. You'll be mournfully humming Con te partiro for 12 days to come.

'Inside No. 9' review: 'The 12 Days of Christine'

People complain about telly not being nearly as good as it used to be. Annoyingly, those sort of people are exactly the type who probably aren't taking a chance on this anthology programme in the style of Tales of the Unexpected and Comedy Playhouse, which is not only as good as telly used to be, it's about as good as television can be, full stop.

Inside No. 9 - The 12 Days of Christine review

The sheer enjoyment of this instalment was found in the filmmaking tricks used to send viewers tumbling through Christine's chaotic life-story; and the central performance of Sheridan Smith, who was wonderful throughout. One of the show's best, undoubtedly.

Inside No. 9 series 2 episode 2 review

This week's instalment of Inside No. 9's six standalone mystery plays took a drastically different turn. The 12 Days Of Christine pays off emotionally beyond the well-crafted spring.

Comedy, they say, is subjective. I compared the first story of the new series of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's Inside No. 9 with Chaucer's Prologue, thereby offending at least one reader who thought its "puerile humour" as "flatulent as its one-dimensional figures". If he hated last night's play, The 12 Days of Christine, it will be for different reasons. Humour did not really come into this dark tale, and if Pemberton played one of his usual sympathetic gay men, Sheridan Smith gave tragic depth to its central character, Christine.

It began with the camera focusing on a Christmas bauble, dully reflecting the intermittent flashes of the lights on its tree. Later, a flickering fluorescent light would extend the clue: this was a play, delivered in 12 fragments spaced over a decade, about a human memory's spasmodic grasp. The Saturnalian confusions of the first scene parodied what we would, by the end, realise was Christine's friable mental conditional.

It is New Year's Eve and she, dressed as a nun, is back from a party having copped off with a pretend fireman. The next scene, set on Valentine's Day, by which time she and Adam are an item, reveals she is a shoe-fitter, flat-sharing with an unsympathetic science student studying, as it happens, "measurable magnitudes".

As she and Adam's relationship progresses through marriage, sleepless parenthood, the death of her father and separation, Christine becomes half-convinced that she is being haunted by her goofy first boyfriend who, she has forgotten, died at the age of 16. Christine has, says her mother, a memory like a sieve. At this stage, the viewer will be more interested in the thought that Christine has deliberately blocked the lad out and that he has come back into her life seeking revenge. A crash in which Christine is injured appears later to have been caused by him walking in front of her car.

Shearsmith and Pemberton have long been interested in ghost stories, finding an affinity between their breaches of realism and comedy's transgressions. What is remarkable is they have used this trope and a troupe of comedy actors - notably the excellent Michele Dotrice, who plays Christine's mum - to make a serious statement about the supernatural. A haunting, it is strongly suggested, is a symptom of mental illness, in this caser early-onset dementia. Life for Christine has become a nightmare version of her favourite game: blind man's bluff.

The final scene is set again at Christmas, this time around a family table, in which all appears to have been restored. Adam and Christine are back together. Her Alzheimic father, who had died, is alive once more. She is presented with a book of photos, her life in pictures. She feels it "flashing by" - and with sudden, awful clarity, Christine works out what has happened. So do we. Her son returns from a nativity play dressed as an angel. Her favourite CD, Con te Partiro, strikes up, sung by an artist known for his physical rather than mental blindness.

This was a masterpiece, whether or not my interpretation is right (it could have been one long dying dream). It was shown on Maundy Thursday, presumably, only because, despite its Yule-like bookends, we would not have had the stomach for it at Christmas.