Inside No.9: The Devil of Christmas

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Inside No.9: The Devil of Christmas

December 27, 2016 - 23:37
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Average: 4.2 (13 votes)
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Forget the turkey dinner and Christmas pud. The genius of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton is enough to leave you salivating this Christmas.

The Devil of Christmas, Inside No 9’s festive special starring Celia (Rula Lenska), Toby (George Bedford), Julian (Steve Pemberton) and Kathy (Jessica Raine)

By lostinbluejazz

Forget the turkey dinner and Christmas pud. The genius of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton is enough to leave you salivating this Christmas.

The festive special for their darkly humorous Inside No.9 series is a cracker of a show. Entitled 'The Devil of Christmas', it is a note-perfect pastiche of '70s television, with a fairly standard ghost story to boot. There is nothing standard about Shearsmith and Pemberton's approach however. Using multiple 16mm cameras to film, and the inclusion of delayed scene starts and fluffed lines, brings an authenticity that could see it mistaken for an episode of the ATV soap Crossroads.

Call the Midwife's Jessica Raine is perfectly cast alongside Pemberton, playing a couple whose received pronunciation was straight out of the Reithian guide to acting. They have come on holiday to a ski lodge with their mother (played by Rula Lenska) and son Toby. But their jolly outing doesn't last long as the caretaker (expertly played by Shearsmith) tells the story of how the "Krampus" (the "devil" of the title) comes to take bad children away in the night.

What follows is a plot with more twists than a candy cane, and which builds suspense with the aid of screeching violins. It is a complete hoot, with the voice of Derek Jacobi providing a "Director's Commentary" that compliments the action on screen brilliantly. All these ingredients mix together perfectly to make an incredibly satisfying cake. Yet it is the icing on the top, the most unexpected final scenes, that truly make this a quality piece of television. I would even go as far as to say it's the best episode yet.

Deliciously scrumptious, it will certainly leave you wanting another slice.

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Anna May's picture

By Anna May @AnnaMayMight

I’d been waiting patiently for this for months, as I’m already a fan of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith as writers. So, having watched everything they’ve done before, I knew what I was getting.

This first episode was aptly aired at Christmas, due to the theme it followed…and, true to the writers’ previous offerings, it was weird, strange, bizarre…basically, raid a thesaurus for any word that fits the meaning ‘wtf is this, I can’t think properly now’, because this is how it probably left most people feeling.

I’ll admit, I was expecting something a little more straightforward, with a few more twists towards the end, but this is what these two do. They don’t do what you’d expect…ever. Also, the really cheesy acting skills of the characters was so overplayed, it made so much more of the whole episode. Just watching these accomplished actors try their best to act badly and make mistakes was a real treat.

Maybe this type of dark humour isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s mine and I find a lot of pleasure in simultaneously cringing and laughing at some of the situations and dialogue. For some reason, we just cannot help mimicking Steve Pemberton’s face and repeating his lines whilst gurning at each other. Why? I don’t know! Similarly, we like to imitate Reece Shearsmith’s characters and their whiny accents. Okay…there’s no hope for us, but we don’t care.

Very simply…I find these guys fascinating for their enthusiasm and commitment to what THEY find funny and I’m so very thankful they want to share it with us and haven’t just jumped on the 'what's everyone else doing' bandwagon and felt pressured into producing anything less than they’re worthy of.

As usual, my response was something like, “I don’t quite know what I just watched, but I want another one.” Next!