Psychoville review

Each individual story in this Halloween treat was entertaining and sprinkled with witty lines and comical moments, although most of the tales had a caveat.

Psychoville Halloween Special review

Although it was something of a mixed bag (as this kind of thing tends to be), it was a great chance to play with these characters in a more fantastical setting and really whet the appetite for the second series.

It's Halloween tonight. And that means you'll be hoping to go to bed spooked and on edge, creepily conscious of every door-creak and curtain-rustle. On that front it'll be hard to beat this special instalment of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's sick comedy horror show. As always, it stirs up a witches' brew of gross characters and hilariously horrible plot details that make it unlike anything else on TV - except the darker urges of The League of Gentlemen given free rein. To give you the flavour of it, early on, a child exploring a dilapidated psychiatric hospital stumbles on an old tobacco tin and discovers, inside, a severed human tongue... Fans of the first series (a second is on the way) will be shivering with pleasure; newcomers can expect unusually vivid nightmares.

Psychoville Halloween Special review

Not terribly amusing or frightening by any stretch of the imagination but entertaining nonetheless. The final scenes at the asylum connect to the conclusion of the first series and sets up the next one very nicely by introducing new characters and a mysterious antagonist group interested in the old inmates.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton return with a portmanteau offering. Framing the stories, we watch as a location manager on a Most Haunted-style show inspects the dilapidation of Ravenhill Psychiatric Hospital. This is spooky enough in itself, but not nearly so nasty as dark tales starring the likes of Mr Jelly, Joy and David. In context, the script has to work harder than usual to provide light relief. Which it does. Lomax offers a lady customer a fiver for some soft toys: "And that's only because I'm curious about your Bagpuss."

One last thing... Mr Jelly

BOO! It's Halloween. Rich Pelley goes trick-or-treating with Psychoville's second most popular children's entertainer, Mr Jelly.

Few shows out-weird Halloween, yet this very funny and bleakly creepy series manages that all the time, and the show takes full advantage of the sinister time of year to be spookier than usual. Once again it returns to the eerie Ravenhill Hospital, where a former resident is aiding a TV producer on a location hunt for Dale Winton's Overnight Ghost Hunt. In homage to British horror flicks, this then uses a portmanteau format to tell some unsettling stories of the former patients...

A Halloween message from Reece Shearsmith

Well - it's finally upon us. All Hallows Eve - the one night of the year when it's alright to inject apples with poison and hand them out to children...

Psychoville Halloween spoiler-free review

Psychoville returns for a suitably sinister Halloween special.

A special edition of the macabre comedy thriller from The League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. It centres on a television location manager, Shearsmith, who has taken his camera with him to the abandoned ruins of the fictional Ravenhill Psychiatric Hospital. He is investigating stories about the ghost of its evil former governess, Edwina Kenchington (Eileen Atkins), for a Most Haunted style programme. In true Psychoville style, the episode is both hilarious and unsettling. Four eccentric tales of terror unfold, each featuring one of the regular characters from the series - the bitter, one-handed children's entertainer Mr Jelly (Shearsmith), the deranged midwife Joy (Dawn French) and her baby, the blind millionaire Mr Lomax (Pemberton), and the serial-killer enthusiast David Sowerbutts (Pemberton again) and his mother. The Mr Jelly one - which sees him opening the door to two mysterious trick-or-treaters - is the strangest, and the funniest. Artfully written and well acted, like the previous award-winning series, this may at times be too odd and too disturbing for some viewers to stomach.