Consider, if you will, the carnival of monsters that Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have presented throughout their career. A cavalcade of grotesques with strange voices, horrible wigs, and a variety of prosthetics. All very impressive, to be sure, but what they don’t get enough credit for is the so-called ‘normal’ characters: a collection of … >
This week’s episode of Inside No. 9 is the third of the second season, which makes it literally Episode No. 9. It’s probably reaching to read too much into such things, particularly as the programmes were almost certainly recorded out of sequence, but there’s still a pleasing symmetry in that there’s a return to roots … >
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, … >
‘La Couchette’ opens up the second season of Inside No. 9, and here you should stop reading if you haven’t seen the episode. A group of disparate characters have been shoved into a confined space, and they are not exactly ideal bedfellows. There’s a lot packed into what’s deceptively a gossamer-light plot involving a dead … >
The second season of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s Inside No. 9 will begin on BBC Two later this month. Six new stories will be set in various different locations, from a sleeping-car on a French train to a Séance in a grand Victorian villa, and from a 17th century village witch trial to a … >
Filming has started on the second season of BBC Two’s Inside No. 9. Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s anthology of darkly comic tales launched last February and six new episodes will air later this year. Guest stars in Season 2 will include Alice Lowe (Sightseers); Alison Steadman (Gavin & Stacey); Claire Skinner (Outnumbered); David Warner … >
The petty jealousy and absurd one-upmanship continues in this final instalment of BBC One’s Mapp and Lucia. My cringing discomfort at the ridiculousness of the titular characters at times moves me to want to grab them by the kingfisher blue lapels and shout at them that maybe their lives would be a little bit more … >
Insufferable is the word I keep coming back to when I try to find new and novel ways of describing the two titular characters of BBC One’s Mapp and Lucia. Insufferable, insufferable, insufferable. I’m not normally one to engage in schadenfreude; indeed, sometimes I do think my empathy for make believe characters extends far further … >
By the end of the first episode of BBC One’s new adaptation of EF Benson’s Mapp and Lucia, I found myself expressing to my partner in no uncertain terms my gratitude that we live in a midsize city where we don’t know any of our neighbours. Anna Chancellor is Mrs. Lucas – known to her … >
Miranda Richardson (Parade’s End) and Anna Chancellor (Spooks) star as notorious small-town social rivals Miss Elizabeth Mapp and Mrs Emmeline ‘Lucia’ Lucas in Steve Pemberton’s adaptation of EF Benson’s comic drama Mapp and Lucia. Set in the summer of 1930, the three-part series also stars Mark Gatiss (Sherlock) as Raj Army veteran Major Benjy, alongside writer … >