In Praise of Inside No. 9

The fifth series of BBC 2's Inside No. 9 ended last night with another twisty black comedy, the cleverly titled Stakeout. Until a few weeks ago, I'd never watched this series, written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. but an article in the Sunday Times prompted my interest by drawing a comparison with Tales of the Unexpected, a highly popular anthology series in its day which featured some good stories and some good actors (plus great opening titles and theme music!), even though when you watch it now, some of the episodes seem very dated.

So I took a look, and soon I was hooked. Binge-watching is something I rarely do, since there is never enough time, given all the writing projects I have on the go, but the irresistible appeal of Inside No. 9 meant I changed my ways. Thanks to iPlayer, I've now watched every episode and they have left me lost in admiration of the brilliance of the storylines. Pemberton and Shearsmith are also accomplished and versatile actors, who take key roles in every episode, and the quality of the scripts attracts actors ranging from Kenneth Cranham and David Morrissey to Felicity Kendal and Sheridan Smith. But in this post I'd like to focus on the quality of their writing. It's so good that I want to watch each episode all over again, to appreciate more fully the subtleties of the scripts.

Inside No. 9 is really unclassifiable. Its defining features include dark (sometimes very dark) humour and startling plot twists, as well as claustrophobic settings linked (often tenuously, but that doesn't matter) by the number 9: a police car, an art gallery, a house where the owners are about to move, and so on. Fawlty Towers, Jonathan Creek and some episodes of Blackadder - three of my all-time favourite witty TV shows - illustrated the potential of a tightly confined setting, and Inside No. 9 rings the changes with extraordinary flair.

It's not a crime series, and the emotions evoked by the stories (as with The 12 Days of Christine, a terrific vehicle for Sheridan Smith) vary widely, but as you would expect, tropes from fiction's most popular genre often feature. One character in Stakeout made fun of the familiar ingredients of cop shows, although of course the pay-off was not what we'd been led to expect. This ability to keep confounding expectations is one of the hallmarks of high calibre writing, whether your name is Shakespeare, Dickens, or (yes!) Agatha Christie or Anthony Horowitz; and Pemberton and Shearsmith are first-rate writers. One episode I admired enormously, Once Removed, is a superb example of reverse chronology, a technique very difficult to master. Another is a story about a burglary with no dialogue. Hotel Zanzibar is a nod to Shakespearean comedy and the characters speak in iambic pentameter. 

Private View is a take on And Then There Were None, with a pastiche of Theatre of Blood thrown in. (Incidentally, the sheer number of contemporary stories which use the And Then There Were None tropes shows the depth of the impression Christie's novel has made on our culture). Even better was The Riddle of the Sphinx, in which crosswords and word play feature, before a truly shocking finale. And then there is Misdirection, possibly my absolute favourite episode (though how can one choose from such riches?), a brilliant updating of the John Dickson Carr/Clayton Rawson kind of conjuring trick mystery. If Pemberton and Shearsmith wrote detective novels, they would be huge stars in our firmament. I doubt they have many ambitions in that direction, but it's our loss.

I could go on and on, but you've got the picture. I've become a huge fan of Pemberton and Shearsmith as writers - and as I say, I'm also impressed by the range of their acting (I mentioned Shearsmith's performance in The Widower on this blog six years ago). I can't wait for the next series.

The Party and Vicious Circle

My recent TV diet has included a couple more Tales of the Unexpected, both of which are agreeable time-passers. The Vicious Circle, from a story by the American writer Donald Honig, offers the neater twist at the end. This is a story which involves an elderly lady catching a young man who tries to burgle her. He injures his ankle, and she takes him home and tries to encourage him to reform. Her well-meaning efforts don’t succeed, but before long, he receives an unexpected surprise.

The Party is based on a story by Doug Morgan. It features a long-serving manager of a company which is about to be taken over. His career is under threat, and it seems that the younger generation is about to overtake him. When he over-reacts in response, fate takes over.

The Party is notable less for its story than for its cast. Robert Morley stars as Mr Knox, the grumpy manager, and his wife is played by Irish actress Joyce Redman. And in a smaller part as a young girl in the office is Joyce’s niece – Amanda Redman, nowadays a very big name indeed. This must have been one of her very first TV roles.

These episodes were made almost 30 years ago, and by the standards of today, they seem a little slow, even though they are short. But as amiable and undermanding pieces of light entertainment, they remain worth watching.

Proof of Guilt

I’ve just come across the fact that Tales of the Unexpected are being re-run on Sky Arts channel. I first saw this series in the70s. It began with adaptations of stories by Roald Dahl, including some real classics, and it went on to include a wide range of mysteries. The quality was sometimes uneven, and I only saw some of the episodes, but I enjoyed many of those I did see.

So I decided to take a look at a programme I hadn’t seen before, although I seem to recall the original short story from an anthology. This was ‘Proof of Guilt’ by Bill Pronzini. It begins with a shooting in a locked office room on the sixth floor of a tower block. The victim must have been shot by his visitor – but where is the weapon?

It’s a very neat example of the ‘locked room’ mystery, with a rather witty and appealing solution. This version featured Roy Marsden as the initially confident detective – some years before he became P.D. James’ Adam Dalgleish. Jeremy Clyde played the smooth suspect. As often is the case with 70s shows, the set was a bit wooden, but I found the episode entertaining

The terrific theme music, by the way, was written by Ron Grainer, also responsible for the memorable theme for Doctor Who.