Inside No 9: relationship drama hides horror

You have to hand it to the creators of Inside No 9. Four series in, their stories still have the power to surprise and shock.

Inside No 9: To Have and to Hold, review

Just when you thought this series couldn't get any darker.

Inside No. 9: Series 4, Episode 4 - To Have and To Hold

A terrace house is the setting for this week's tale, about a married couple and some dark secrets.

Inside No. 9 series 4 episode 4 review

A wedding photographer's tired marriage comes under the microscope in yet another tremendous Inside No. 9 episode.

Inside No 9 (BBC Two) continues its most successful series ever. Perhaps it will never quite reach the inspired heights of last week's "Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room" episode, a quite beautifully judged (and touching) jewel of a half-hour's acting/writing/comedy masterclass; already, there's talk of awards. But the relatively mundane "Once Removed", which aired a few days ago, still stood on commanding heights. Not only did it successfully manage to tell the story of a series of (comedy) murders backwards, timeslipping back 10 minutes every 10 minutes in a way the makers of Rellik must have gritted their teeth to see executed so well - ah, so that's how you do it. It also had one tiny gem that could be said to sum up an entire philosophy. Reece Shearsmith, being suffocated by bubble wrap, has to pause to poke quick, staccato holes in the bubbles before his hands can grab the polythene properly to rip an airhole (and let him continue on his killy spree). In this tiny, wordless mix of wanton silliness and dark peril lie oceans of singular comedy.

Inside the many number nines stretch continents of the imagination, and they can now call on the finest actors, such as Monica Dolan, Rory Kinnear, Jason Watkins, Kenneth Cranham, Zoe Wanamaker, to aid and slyly abet them... let it long be inexplicably underrated, so I can just squeezefully enjoy it on my own, before the bandwagon-jumping begins.

In my review of the opening episode "Zanzibar", I theorised that there were better, darker stories to come from Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith and thankfully I wasn't wrong. Last week's poignant and funny "Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room" was the duo's love letter to old British comedy whose twist was heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measure. However, in terms of narrative complexity, I found this week's "Once Removed" even more enjoyable as it kept you guessing up until the end. The episode starts quite inconsequentially with May (Monica Dolan) moving home and welcoming in removal man Spike (Nick Moran) from the hilariously titled firm Handle Me Gently. However, all is not what it seems especially when we meet May's husband Viktor (Shearsmith) who appears sinister from the outset and becomes more so as the episode goes on. "Once Removed" gets its name from the fact that the plot flashes back every ten minutes to roll out the story even more and every time our perception of the characters change. "Once Removed", like most Inside No. 9 episodes, benefits from a fantastic guest cast with special praise going to David Calder playing a character who believes he's Andrew Lloyd Webber. Similarly brilliant in this episode is Pemberton who plays a nervous estate agent intent on selling the house that is central to the plot. But it's the storytelling that really makes "Once Removed" one of the greatest thirty minutes of TV I've seen in a while and makes me marvel at the brilliance of the show's writing duo. The narrative flashbacks all work and don't feel like a gimmick as they did in last year's disappointing crime drama Rellik. The final reveal also plays with the title of the show in a very clever way and shows how the episode's case of mistaken identity occurred in the first place. Although you'd feel that "Once Removed" was where this series of Inside No. 9 peaks fear not as, in my opinion, next week's "To Have and To Hold" is even better.

Preview: Series 4, Episode 4, To Have And To Hold

It's not a bundle of laughs but pretty powerful nightmare-inducing stuff as we watch the plot developing before our very eyes.

Inside No. 9 review: Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith can wreck you heart like no-one else when they want to.

Inside No. 9 Series 4 BFI Preview transcript

Q&A with Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Adam Tandy and David Kerr, hosted by Justin Johnson.

TV Review: Inside No. 9 - Once Removed

After two well-received episodes, the third tale from the fourth season of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's anthology series continues to impress.