Review of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's latest

In an interview to promote the return of Inside No 9, Reece Shearsmith teased that the new series was sometimes ‘quite gory… something that we haven’t done before’.

He was no doubt talking about tonight’s episode, Mother’s Ruin, technically the second instalment of season eight following the Christmas special, The Bones Of St Nicholas.

Here, Shearsmith and his co-creator Steve Pemberton play the sons of a couple of thoroughly nasty – but now-deceased –  East End villains. We meet the brothers in dimly-lit scenes as they break into their mother’s house, its gaudy, dated decor perfectly preserved since her demise a year ago.

Playing true to their usual type, Shearsmith’s Edward is the cynical hard-nosed one with clear aims, while Pemberton’s Harry is weaker-willed and more reluctantly along for the ride. But he has a very specific role to play in Edward’s creepy and audacious plan, which involves dressing up in his dead mother’s clothes. That might seem like an echo of Psycho’s Norman Bates, but as it happens, Harry is the least psychotic of the four characters in this hard-edged episode.

For the pair are interrupted in their sinister endeavours by the new owners of the property, Frances and Reggie (Anita Dobson and Phil Daniels), who happen to be former associates of the siblings’ gangster parents. Daniels relishes in the casual sociopathic odiousness of his part, while Dobson is joyous as the cheerful, no-nonsense Cockney, easy-going despite the horrific tasks her husband gets up to.

Between them they are attuned to the careful mix of horror and comedy that defines Inside No 9 – although Mother’s Ruin is definitely on the bloodier end of the spectrum. The horror is mixed with mundanities, such as inconsequential chat about the likes of BBC1 daytime staple Father Brown, a witty strand about Frances’s belief in cheap psychics, and occasional wordplay delivered deadpan.

Pemberton and Shearsmith’s script skilfully sets up the backstory without ever feeling like laboured exposition – and almost every nugget of information proves crucial to what happens next. And while the twist in the tale is not the jaw-dropper the pair sometimes engineer, it all wraps in a delightfully satisfying way. If ‘delightfully’ is apposite for an episode with at least one gruesome scene you may end up watching through your fingers.

» Inside No 9: Mother's Ruin is now available on BBC iPlayer

Review date: 27 Apr 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett