Inside No. 9

TV review: Inside No. 9, The 12 Days Of Christine

Smart, candid, and lighter on the gags than its predecessor, 12 Days of Christine boasts some truly spooky moments. It's also liable to hollow out your guts like an emotional ice cream scoop, but the fact that the endearing tone of the episode is one of warmth and authenticity is just one of the reasons this series continues to turn out 30-minute masterclasses in television making.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton are the strange, slightly upsetting gift that keeps on giving. In this second series, they reprise their talent for macabre tales united only by their being well-written, tightly plotted and taking place inside a door with a No 9 on it. Tonight's episode stars Sheridan Smith as Christine, a sales clerk whose life we observe in impressionistic blasts. Can you unpick her story before she herself says: "Oh, I know what this is ..."? And yes, 70s people, that is Michele Dotrice!

Radio Times review

If you're wondering why we're not billing this as a comedy, that's because there's almost nothing funny in the latest tale. Instead, it's an utterly superb piece of drama, imbued with an increasing sense of dread - with the almost unguessable sting in the tail that this series delivers so well.

Little should be said about the plot other than that The 12 Days of Christine is set in flat No 9 of a tower block and it begins with a woman dressed as a nun and a man in fireman gear tumbling onto a settee after copping off at a fancy dress party. Hunky Tom Riley is Adam and Sheridan Smith gives another multi-faceted, stunning performance as the troubled Christine. Sitcom legend Michele Dotrice plays her mum.

Writers Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith pop up in minor but telling roles. And Pemberton deploys Con te partiro on the soundtrack, as he once did in Benidorm - but with devastating effect.

Inside No 9: the best thing I've seen all year

Bravo to every single person involved in this incredible show.

One of the best pieces of television for years

Sheridan Smith stars in one of the best pieces of television for years.

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?