Inside story

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton on the last-ever season of their acclaimed anthology comedy

- STEVEN PERKINS

NEW COMEDY

Inside No. 9 Wednesday, 10pm, BBC2

After a decade of ambitious, imaginative and frequently sinister stand-alone stories, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have decided to call time on their BAFTA-winning comedy Inside No. 9 – appropriately enough, with its ninth season.

The final run of six episodes opens with Boo to a Goose, set on a late-night train as a group of strangers are faced with a moral dilemma when Elena (Motherland’s Philippa Dunne) has her purse stolen during a power outage. Accusations start flying over who was responsible, but as everyone’s deepest prejudices are revealed, events take a deeply disturbing turn.

TV&Satellite Week caught up with Pemberton, 56, and Shearsmith, 54, for an insight into the making of the final season…

Why have you decided to end the show now? 

Pemberton There’s a synchronicity between it being the ninth season and Inside No. 9. We feel really lucky to have got to nine, so while people are still enjoying it and finding it surprising, we don’t have any doubts that it’s the right time. The moment a show like this becomes predictable is the moment that it’s dead for us, really.

Shearsmith We’ve been doing it for 10 years. Poetically, it feels like the right time to finish. We’re fans of it ourselves, and we want to finish it thinking, ‘Yes, that was a really good last season.’