Inside No. 9

Inside No. 9, BBC Two, review: 'sadly beautiful'

I haven't been a fan of all of them - often they're too arch for their own good. But last night Inside No. 9 pitched for something deeper - genuine poignancy - and in just half an hour it achieved it.

TV Preview: Inside No. 9 - The Twelve Days Of Christine

I can't speak highly enough of this episode. If you've loved the first series and last week's opener you will love this.

Inside No. 9 series 2 episode 1 review: La Couchette

A solid start to another run of surprises from Inside No. 9.

Inside No 9 was a perfect little half-hour of claustrophobic grand guignol, and Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton are the bastard love-children of Alfred Hitchcock and Roald Dahl. A Eurostar six-berth couchette from Paris to Bourg-St-Maurice, a scarily thin, scarily ambitious doctor, a fat farting Kraut, a northern top-bunk couple anticipating their mad daughter's wedding, Jack Whitehall as a spoilt-posh delivering seriously undeliverable lines with entirely believable gusto, an unnerving twist in the tail. Beautifully, beautifully dark, and guiltily funny, and nobody now does it better.

Sheridan Smith stars in a story that sees Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith departing radically from their usual claustrophobic black comedy; there is little to laugh at in The 12 Days Of Christine, a study of time and memory that resembles a short enigmatic arthouse film. In a dozen scenes coinciding with public or personal red-letter days, Smith plays a woman passing through marriage, motherhood, divorce and bereavement, with Paul Copley, Michele Dotrice, Tom Riley and the writers in supporting roles.

Alarming things keep happening to Christine, making her increasingly troubled and presenting the viewer with a series of puzzles. Why, for example, does the heroine's flatmate mention mathematical number theory? Why are we subjected to Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman warbling Time To Say Goodbye? Are these significant clues, or just red herrings?

The first run of Inside No. 9's collection of short stories was met with much acclaim especially for the dialogue-free A Quiet Night In. This week's episode, La Couchette, didn't really have the same special edge to it but did at least have its moments.

Set in carriage number nine of a sleeper train going through Paris, the story introduced us to a number of characters who were all forced into a small space together. They included a doctor who was about to give a speech to the WHO (Shearsmith), a flatulent German (Pemberton), an Australian backpacker (Jessica Gunning), a posh stowaway (Jack Whitehall) and a couple on the way to their daughter's wedding (Mark Benton and Julie Hesmondhalgh). The twist in the tale here was that, about half way through the piece, the passengers realised that one of their number was dead.

Pemberton and Shearsmith's script then took a darker turn as the characters decided whether to risk stopping the train or inform the authorities once they'd reached their destination.

I've personally always been a fan of Shearsmith and Pemberton's work and I thought La Couchette definitely had some merit. I felt that every character was well-realised and that there was some genuine moments of fine observational humour especially in regards Benton and Hesmondhalgh's characters. The story also contained an ending I didn't see coming and it left me with the icy feeling I often get after watching a Pemberton and Shearsmith piece. On the other hand I wasn't a fan of the toilet humour employed by Pemberton's character and I thought that Jack Whitehall added little to the episode overall.

Even by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's usual high standards, this week's instalment of Inside No. 9 is exceptional. Set in a small flat, The 12 Days Of Christine follows the key moments in the life of a young woman, played by Sheridan Smith. But, as always, everything is not quite as it seems. Powerful, poignant and inventive, it's a masterclass in concise storytelling.

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith are something else. In the first series of Inside No. 9 last year, there was an episode involving a couple of masked idiots trying to steal a painting from a modernist home in which scarcely a word was spoken, and yet it was one of the funniest, cleverest, most imaginative and original programmes shown on television in the last 15 years. They've done it again.

This magnificent episode [The 12 Days of Christine] is not entirely perfect - there's a lot of spooky creeping around at night with lights flickering on and off that suggests the pair may have spent more time with The League Of Gentlemen and Psychoville than is strictly healthy. However, if you treat the presence of the otherworldly as a means to an end, the episode is a distillation of accurate observation that says more about the hope and messiness and disappointment of life in half an hour than most dramas say over an entire series.

It describes the trajectory of one woman's life - superbly performed, as always, by Sheridan Smith - from her student days to marriage, children and beyond. At the very end, looking back with sadness and regret, she says: "I didn't think it would turn out like this." There is something infinitely poignant about seeing two different versions of events and recognising the chasm between what might have been and what was.

Inside No. 9 review - I'm just not laughing

I'm sure I'll be crucified - probably quite rightly - but I don't love Inside No 9.

Inside No 9, TV review

Toilet humour with a twist - Pemberton and Shearsmith are in a different league.