The BBC series is currently at the halfway point of what co-creators Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have said will be its last ever six-part season
The latter was a staple of American television’s first Golden Age in the 1950s. By far the most popular anthology series were those dealing in suspense, science fiction and the supernatural.
There were plenty of them on US TV, but the most durable were Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-62), which was later expanded and renamed The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-65); Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959-64) and his later, wholly horror-themed Night Gallery (1969-72), and the less well-known but still hugely influential The Outer Limits (1962-64), which was devoted exclusively to sci-fi.
British television was no slouch either when it came to creepy anthology series, particularly between the 1960s and the 80s.
Among the best of them were Mystery and Imagination (which featured an adaptation of Dracula with an unusually cast Denholm Elliott as the vampire count), Journey to the Unknown (produced by Hammer Films), Dead of Night, Thriller, Beasts (six animal-themed chillers written by Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale), Supernatural, Tales of the Unexpected and Hammer House of Horror.
Thanks to YouTube — a treasure trove of old televisions shows — and channels such as Talking Pictures, Legend and Sky Arts (currently showing daily double bills of Tales of the Unexpected and Alfred Hitchcock Presents), many of these series have been resurrected for a new generation of viewers who otherwise would probably never have discovered them.
The popularity of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, both on Netflix, proves that creepy anthology series have never truly gone out of fashion.
But for many of us, the best modern anthology series of all, and the one that most honours the spirit of those that came before it, is the brilliant Inside No 9 (BBC2, Wednesdays,11:15pm).
Adrian Scarbrough in this week’s episode of Inside No 9. Photo: BBC Studios/James Stack
It’s currently at the halfway point of what co-creators Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have said will be its last ever six-part season. After nine seasons in 10 years, they feel they’ve done all they possibly can with it.
This is putting it mildly, to say the least. Inside No 9 is usually described as “black comedy”. That’s true to an extent; a morbid sense of humour runs through the series and a good number of episodes come with a twist in the tail.
Yet it doesn’t come near to capturing the breathtaking variety and inventiveness of what Pemberton and Shearsmith, who wrote every episode and appear in all but a handful of them, have achieved over the years.
Inside No 9 has never been what you’d call a ratings hit. The audience has averaged roughly 1.5 million and was considerably less than that for the first couple of seasons. But the BBC has stuck loyally by it and been rewarded with a series unlike any other.
Who else but these two would dare to make an episode that was essentially a half-hour of silent comedy, or a Reservoir Dogs pastiche done in the style of commedia dell’arte, or a live Halloween episode, complete with fake technical problems and unfolding in real time, in a supposedly haunted television studio?
Pemberton and Shearsmith can ramp up the scares when they want to. The seasonal special The Devil of Christmas, set in the 1970s and shot using authentic period cameras, starts out as a tale of an English family being spooked by the story of the Krampus and ends with a twist that’s as genuinely disturbing as it is unexpected.
Some of the most memorable episodes are the ones that don’t feature dark comedy, horror or suspense.
One of my personal favourites, Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room, about a former comedy double act meeting up after years of estrangement, has a payoff that is deeply poignant and moving
One of my personal favourites, Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room, about a former comedy double act meeting up after years of estrangement, has a payoff that is deeply poignant and moving.
This week’s episode, a suburban murder mystery shown entirely through a doorbell camera, was well up to Pemberton and Shearsmith’s ingenious standards and proved they have plenty left in the tank.
Nonetheless, Inside No 9 will soon be no more. But I have no doubt many new audiences will be watching it for decades to come.
