Inside No. 9 gets a second series
BBC Two have ordered a second series of Inside No. 9 from The League of Gentlemen’s Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith – before the first has even hit screens.
Shearsmith confirmed the news today in an interview with comedy website Chortle, saying: “We have now got a second series of No. 9.
“We’ve got to get the scripts going because I think we film them at the end of autumn, so we want to make sure that they’re good and ready.
‘You want to set yourself a bar quite high where you can look back at the first series and think, “Oh god these are really good, we’d better carry on and top them again”. We’ve got to get our thinking caps on again.’
The first series debuts on BBC2 on Wednesday 5 February at 10pm.
Harking back to classic anthology series such as Tales of the Unexpected, each episode will be a stand-alone story set in a solitary location.
A different ‘No. 9′ will take centre stage each week, with locations including a theatre dressing room, a large country house, a flat above a shop and inside a single wardrobe.
The series’ structure was partially inspired by an episode of Psychoville, which takes place in a single room, and was shot in just two takes.
Initially pitched as a cost-cutting exercise, the experience helped spawn the concept for Inside No. 9, after the BBC passed over Psychoville for a third series two years ago.
“We wanted to explore the sense of claustrophobia and intensity that is brought about by limiting the action to one location in each story,” say Shearsmith and Pemberton.
Originally titled Happy Endings, Inside No. 9 was given its first public airing late last December, as part of the British Film Institute’s Gothic season.
Episodes The Harrowing and A Quiet Night In were screened at the BFI’s cinema on London’s Southbank, followed by a Q&A with Pemberton, Shearsmith and produced Adam Tandy, whose previous credits include The Thick of It, In the Loop and I’m Alan Partridge.
Promising the pair’s characteristic mix of high comedy and unsettling horror, Inside No. 9 will also feature an episode without any dialogue.
A Quiet Night In sees a pair of burglars attempting to rob a house, the occupiers ofwhich are refusing to speak to each other.
Other episodes in the six-part series include Last Gasp, The Understudy, Sardines and Tom and Gerri.
Pemberton and Shearsmith will appear throughout the series in various roles, alongside a cast of familiar comedy faces, including Katherine Parkinson (The IT Crowd), Anna Chancellor (The Hour, Pramface), Anne Reid (Last Tango In Halifax), Tamsin Grieg (Friday Night Dinner, Episodes), Julian Rhind-Tutt (Green Wing, A Touch Of Cloth) and Ben Willbond (The Thick Of It, Horrible Histories).
Marc Wootton (Way To Go, High Spirits With Shirley Ghostman), David Bedella (Jerry Springer – The Opera) and Edinburgh Comedy Award-winner Tim Key also make guest appearances.
Jon Plowman, Executive Producer for the BBC, said: “It feels good to be back in the dark places and sunny uplands of Horror Com, a genre that Reece and Steve have really made their own, and I am really glad that our casts are testament to the quality of the scripts.”
