BBC Two’s hit anthology show, Inside No. 9, is back for a fifth series. Creators Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton discuss guest stars, their writing process, and the inspiration behind the twisted tales.

NOTHING else on telly is quite like Inside No. 9.

Created by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, who are also the lead stars, each series is a collection of darkly comic tales which all feature the number nine in some way... but there’s often no way of guessing how.

The award-winning anthology show can be funny, moving and scary in equal measures, and attracts a high calibre of guest stars... David Morrissey, Ralf Little, Maxine Peake and Jenna Coleman appear in the new episodes.

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In 2018, 50-year-old Shearsmith, who was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, and Blackburn-born Pemberton, 52, even pulled off a special live edition of Inside No. 9 in spectacular fashion, succeeding in thoroughly freaking out viewers.

Here, the dynamic duo, who first found fame with BBC sketch show The League Of Gentlemen, tell us more about the forthcoming fifth series.

Tell us about the first episode, which is centred around football.

Steve: That was a one-line idea.

It started with the notion of where it could be set, and then the story grew from that. Once you start thinking about football and, “What are the stories to do with being a referee?”, there were lots and lots of stories, and, watching it now, I’m amazed how much we packed into 30 minutes, actually.

How much of the show is based on real life or your personal interests?

Reece: Steve was the driving force behind the football one. I just learnt it phonetically. We’ve done one about magic and illusion... I wanted to explore that world.

So, one of us will have more of an interest in doing it, and then we sit together and think, “What’s a good story to spin out of it?”

Or it can be some weird little news report that you think, “Does it seem believable?”

Steve: We’ve got another episode in this series which is all kind of monologues, and one of the monologues is a YouTuber.

Free

That came from reading the news story about the girl who tried to blag a free hotel room, just saying, “I’m a YouTuber, give me everything for free”.

So that sparked interest, and we’ve done a whole little YouTube section.

You learn a lot doing this show.

Would you ever revisit episodes from past series?

Reece: We would think about doing a sequel, if it was worth it.

I’m afraid that we would be accused of running out of ideas if we did it, but if it was a good reason to return to something then that would be good.

Do you get actors asking you to write them parts?

Steve: Definitely. David Morrissey had been saying to us for ages that he would love to be involved.

It was interesting with the referees one, because we didn’t know which parts we wanted to play.

Genuinely, we could have played any of those roles within it.

But we just thought for the main refereeing character, to have that really big man ... I was doing Britannia with him and I was telling him about it, and I could see a little glint in his eye.

You have now got 31 episodes of Inside No.9 under your belt. Do you have a favourite episode?

Reece: It’s hard, it’s like choosing your favourite child.

The ones that people like are the ones that make you cry; it’s not the comedy ever, it’s the ones that move people.

(On the episode called Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room) we were surprised that that one took such a grip with people.

We thought it was a good one, but we didn’t think it was this amazing, heartfelt.

It was a vehicle for me and Steve to do a two-hander, that’s where it was born from. We’d never done one where it was just us two.

Are you becoming more sensitive to audiences guessing where the storyline is going?

Steve: Yes. Even though we know what our story is and what our ending is, we never want you to get there before we want you to get there.

So, we always sit and we say, ‘What do you think you’re watching when you’re watching this?’ and, ‘Where do you think it’s going?’

We plot out where we hope you think it’s going so that we can send you off down the false track and hopefully there’s a nice surprise.

But one of the joys of the series, and one of the more difficult things, as we write more and more episodes, is to do that in different ways.

Is your sense of humour and sense of what is scary changing as you get older?

Reece: Yeah, a little bit; it’s all about health.

I am more squeamish than I ever used to be, and certainly horror-wise I don’t like all the torture-y ones.

Would you do an Inside No.9 film of theatre show?

Steve: We haven’t really talked about doing a film just because, thankfully, they keep recommissioning the series.

We really like the 30-minute format, I think it really suits us to not have to artificially bloat the stories.

It’s punchy, and we really enjoy that.

We certainly have talked about doing stage versions, whether it be pre-existing scripts or new ones.

I think that might be something we look at in the future.

Inside No. 9 returns to BBC Two on Monday.