Inside No. 9 con­tin­ues to delve into dark com­e­dy with The Dev­il of Christmas

There is some­thing incred­i­bly unique and slight­ly claus­tro­pho­bic about sto­ries unrav­el­ling in one loca­tion. Every dec­o­ra­tive fea­ture, every aspect of that par­tic­u­lar envi­ron­ment becomes a part of the sto­ry, adding to a spe­cif­ic atmos­phere, a silent warn­ing of things to unrav­el. Hitchcock’s Rear Win­dow, Michael Haneke’s Fun­ny Games and John Hugh­es’ The Break­fast Club are all per­fect exam­ples of char­ac­ters and sto­ry­lines giv­en the free­dom to evolve in an oth­er­wise con­fined set­ting – and they do so in a man­ner that wouldn’t be pos­si­ble in a fast-paced, con­stant­ly chang­ing environment.

Many clas­sic mur­der sto­ries have stuck to this for­mat due to the strange, haunt­ing sen­sa­tion that mes­meris­es view­ers: the idea of an evil enti­ty being among us, the thought of a stranger roam­ing through our own pri­vate homes and, most impor­tant­ly, the shock val­ue of under­stand­ing that one does not have to step out­side of their com­fort zone to be met with tragedy – that an entire mur­der scene can unfold behind the four walls we call home.

Inside No. 9, the brain­child of Reece Shear­smith and Steve Pem­ber­ton, explores the sin­gle-loca­tion approach through obscure com­e­dy and with the type of finesse only a select few writ­ers would dare to employ these days. The anthol­o­gy series’ uncom­fort­able mix of humour and hor­ror is at times rem­i­nis­cent of Psy­chovil­lean char­ac­ters and tinges, but occu­pies a genre space entire­ly of its own. In Inside No. 9’s first two sea­sons, Pem­ber­ton and Shear­smith delved into Shake­speare­an antics in ​‘The Under­study’, reliv­ed the 17^th cen­tu­ry witch hunts in ​‘The Tri­al of Eliz­a­beth Gadge’ and invit­ed us to sev­er­al social gath­er­ings with twist­ed end­ings in ​‘Nana’s Par­ty’, ​‘The 12 Days of Chris­tine’ and ​‘Sar­dines’. Each episode is strict­ly struc­tured in order to effec­tive­ly con­vey the hid­den themes with­in the story.

Take ​‘La Couchette’. loose­ly inspired by Agatha Christie’s ​‘Mur­der on the Ori­ent Express’, it fol­lows six peo­ple shar­ing a sleep­er car­riage on an overnight train. While the episode is a com­i­cal mys­tery at its core, it intro­duces a type of real­ism in its choice of char­ac­ters: a typ­i­cal mix of trav­el­ling folk you might meet on such a jour­ney, none of whom would nat­u­ral­ly inter­act in any oth­er type of set­ting. As would be the case in a stage pro­duc­tion, the audi­ence is ful­ly aware of its own entrap­ment as the car­riage set­ting does not allow focus on any­thing oth­er than the cramped space and the char­ac­ters awk­ward­ly mov­ing within.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the strongest episodes of the first sea­son, ​‘A Qui­et Night In’, used the vast space of a mod­ern, archi­tec­tural­ly strik­ing build­ing for a beau­ti­ful­ly chore­o­graphed near-silent episode that merged dark com­e­dy with phys­i­cal slap­stick in a most imag­i­na­tive way. It fol­lows two rob­bers (Shear­smith and Pem­per­ton) as they try to over­come increas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed obsta­cles in an attempt to steal a valu­able paint­ing in the afore­men­tioned house. The res­i­dents, played by Oona Chap­lin and Denis Law­son, are so wrapped up in their lover’s quar­rel, so intent on freez­ing one anoth­er out in icy silence, they are unaware of the hap­pen­ings around them. Dif­fer­ent arrange­ments of Rachmaninoff’s ​‘Piano Con­cer­to No.2’ can be heard through­out the major­i­ty of the episode, adding a feel­ing of weight and melan­choly to the cou­ples’ respec­tive posi­tions, and a basis for Shear­smith and Pemperton’s clum­sy footwork.

As a lit­tle sea­son­al treat, and by way of a primer for its third sea­son, this year Inside No. 9 has giv­en us a Christ­mas spe­cial of the seem­ing­ly kitsch vari­ety. Set in 1977, ​‘The Dev­il of Christ­mas’ fol­lows a young fam­i­ly set­tling into their alpine cab­in in Aus­tria on ​“Kram­pus­nacht”. Ini­tial­ly we’re met with all the mer­its of a tacky soap opera style Christ­mas leg­end, com­plete with exag­ger­at­ed facial expres­sions and long dra­mat­ic paus­es designed to dupe us into believ­ing the sto­ry might very well end on a moral note. But as the director’s com­men­tary kicks in, it becomes clear this is far from an ordi­nary Christ­mas story.

While dark themes enter the con­ver­sa­tions – Kram­pus’ search for unruly chil­dren and his poten­tial want for fam­i­ly matri­arch Kathy’s (Jes­si­ca Raine) unborn child, her mother-in-law’s appar­ent envy – the episode’s the­atri­cal style and retro colour-cod­ing dis­tract us from its true genre. The director’s notes pro­hib­it us from form­ing any real con­nec­tion to the pro­tag­o­nists, but a beguil­ing sense of nos­tal­gia gives false hope of a hap­py end­ing expect­ed of fes­tive hol­i­day movies and episodes, in spite of its mys­ti­cal, dan­ger­ous under­tones. But as is typ­i­cal of Pem­ber­ton and Shear­smith, they con­tin­ue to explore the black­est cor­ners of com­e­dy, even dur­ing this most mag­i­cal time of the year.

Due to ​‘The Dev­il of Christ­mas’ being set up to appear like a famil­iar kind of low-bud­get, ​’70s-style hor­ror, one always expects a warped turn­ing point. Only, in this case, we relax into it thanks to a steady pace and Fulcher’s (Derek Jaco­bi) account of behind-the-scenes antics. This clever con­struc­tion allows for the rapid decon­struc­tion of one genre to sub­tly flow into an entire­ly dif­fer­ent tone alto­geth­er, the episode end­ing on a sur­pris­ing­ly night­mar­ish note that abrupt­ly cuts to the channel’s test pat­tern. It may not be your typ­i­cal hol­i­day cheer and mistle­toe schmaltz, but it per­fect­ly sets up the joys that are sure­ly to come in Inside No. 9’s third full season.