Inside No. 9 episode 1 review: Sardines

Looking for a refreshingly different bit of British telly? Look no further than the new comedy drama series Inside No. 9.

Review: Inside No. 9, BBC Two

There was much to enjoy in beautifully nuanced performances, particularly by Tim Key and Katherine Parkinson.

It has been a long march for The League Of Gentlemen's Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith since their original (very original) TV series in 1999. With each subsequent venture they have scrambled farther over the top. Inside No. 9, a series of one-off plays each taking place at a different address starting with 9, represents a retreat to firmer ground.

Last night's debut was much less fantastical than their last series Psychoville, free of prosthetics and cross-dressing. It dealt, as per, with incest and abuse, but in the manner that Alan Ayckbourn might. The Greek ruled that plays should take place over a single day in a single place. Sardines occurred over half an hour in a single wardrobe. It occupied a wall in an outsized family house, the scene of uptight daughter Rebecca's engagement party. Childhood momentum had propelled her and brother Carl (Pemberton), a man barely out of the closet and about to enter a wardrobe, into a game of sardines that no one wanted to play.

Katherine Parkinson's Rebecca was a superb study in congenital dissatisfaction, about to marry a man whose previous lover is not only still on his mind but in the wardrobe. The whole party ends up in there, including the dull, quiet one (beware the dull, quiet ones, they are usually the writers' surrogates). It is Carl, though, who outs the elephant in the wardrobe, a sexual assault on a child by his bullying father: "I was teaching the boy how to wash himself!" responds the father.

Anne Reid, Julian Rhind-Tutt and Anna Chancellor must have so enjoyed getting dialogue in which each sentence was minutely crafted for them. My favourite line may even have come from Timothy West as the patriarch complaining at a transgressing of sardine rules: "This isn't hide-and-go-seek". Was that posh for "hide and seek" or a unique verbal corruption?

Sardines was a disciplined comedy, but a little bit of discipline, as one of the League's perverts might say, never did anyone any harm. Save for the Tales of the Unexpected twist, I loved it.

Review - Inside No. 9: Sardines

It's been a long time since TV embraced the anthology format, but if it creates episodes as classy as these, it could be time for a revival - although it's hard to envisage who else could pull it off as skilfully as these League Of Gentlemen alumni.

Inside No. 9 - comedy makes a triumphant debut

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton have created a masterpiece.

TV review: Inside No. 9 - 'Sardines'

Subtle and disciplined, laden with biting humour and occasional barbs of unsettling suspense, its cleverness is laid bare in the cold light of post-revelation day.

Twitter stats: Inside No. 9 is no average comedy

The most interesting aspect of the Twitter reaction to Inside No. 9 was the shape of the graph produced.

First in an anthology squeezed from the brains of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, with each darkly diverse tale unfolding within a different residence numbered nine. In this opener, which features Katherine Parkinson, Anne Reid and Timothy West, a country manor hosts an uncomfortable game of sardines between a family long since grown apart. A slow burner compared with the episodes that follow, but a decent introduction to a series stylistically similar to criminally disregarded Dawn French vehicle Murder Most Horrid.

How Shearsmith and Pemberton have revived a lost genre

The anthology series - a collection of individual, unrelated episodes - gave birth to some famous hit shows before falling into disrepute among commissioners.

Radio Times review

Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith return. If their last macabre comedy drama, Psychoville, was slightly weighed down by servicing a tricky overarching storyline, there's no such problem here since this is a series of one-offs, set in a variety of homes that all happen to be number nine on their street.

The opener is confined not just to a house, but to one room in a fusty old family mansion. And mostly, we're in the wardrobe: two grown-up siblings who used to live here (Pemberton and Katherine Parkinson) are celebrating her engagement with a party - and a game of sardines. As more guests squeeze in, everyone gets less and less comfortable, until the bickering turns to bile.

It's a vicious little one-act, one-room play, deftly staged and superbly acted by a cast that also includes Anne Reid, Anna Chancellor, Timothy West and Tim Key.