The Cutprice Guignol

When your best work is behind you, what comes next?

That’s the question this week’s Inside No. 9, Curse of the Ninth, explores, via, because why not, the tropes of gothic horror and near-lethal levels of punnery. Let’s get into it!

Curse of the Ninth follows a piano tuner Jonah (Shearsmith) as he grapples with a long-held superstition during a visit to a country estate: that every respected composer, after reaching their ninth symphony, will die. A curse that proved very true, with regards to the house’s esteemed former resident Burnham (Eddie Marsan) who committed suicide as he completed his ninth symphony, leaving his widow (Natalie Dormer, about whom, to be clear, I am totally normal) to contend with his creative legacy.

I’m really glad this season has at least one historical episode; though Inside No. 9 doesn’t delve into the past often, when it does, it’s usually to pretty impressive effect (see: The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge or, one of my personal favourites, The Devil of Christmas) – add to that such a deliciously gothic setting and premise, a chance for Pemberton and Shearsmith to flex their impressive experience in the classic horror tropes of the genre, and I’m well and truly in.

And God, this might be my favourite historical episode the show has ever put together, a glorious return to form after last week’s flub. It’s a truly meticulous episode, immaculately-scripted, grotesque and arch and witty and profoundly unsettling, moving between tones with a practiced ease that reminds me how much I’m going to miss Inside No. 9 when it finishes next week. There’s a touch of Carry On-style comedy in the first act (Steven Pemberton’s lawyer being named Dickey Van Arse is exactly the kind of shite that makes me snort into my tea), but it segues beautifully into the real gothic horror to come – given gothic’s penchant for the absurd, a side of wit is practically required to allow the suspension of disbelief.

But when the gothic horror hits, it’s genuinely brilliant. Jonah joins forces with Devonshire (Hayley Squires, one of the stars of my dearly beloved In Fabric), Lillian’s maid, to dig up Burnham who has been buried with what remains of his ninth symphony. Of course, Jonah’s commitment to using this newly-discovered work for purely artistic ends doesn’t go down well with Devonshire, leading to a scuffle where she ends up dead – well, nearly. As Jonah buries Devonshire’s body in Burnham’s grave (under classic BBC soundstage lighting that could have come right from one of the Christmas ghost stories from the 1970s), there’s this truly horrible moment where her eyes fly open, and you realize she’s being buried alive – it comes as such a sharp sidestep from the comedy and lands all the better for it, at least for me.

Lillian and Dickey soon set Jonah to work on completing Burnham’s unfinished symphony in order to pay off Lillian’s debts, and it’s here that this episode really soars for me. Jonah shares conversation with a vision of Burnham’s bloodied corpse – the way director Guillem Morales directs this, just Marsan’s feet appearing in the chair as Jonah works, scratched that Susan Hill itch deep within my brain – and manages to complete the work. Well, nearly – he hands it off to Lillian (who, I have to say, is given such life by Dormer – she’s got an archness to her in this role that really makes Lillian feel fully-fledged in the short screentime she gets) to put the final pieces together, leading to her encounter with the curse, and one of the show’s most viscerally unpleasant pieces of sound design as she hits the ground with a resounding “crack”.

But aside from this episode being the kind of gothic horror that I love, it’s also a really interesting choice to position as the second-last episode of the show’s run. Because Curse of the Ninth is, as much as it’s a tongue-in-cheek MR James riff, a story about creative decline, and the fear of what lies beyond when you’ve created your best work. Burnham’s ghost looms over this story, a creative unable to contend with the fact that his greatest symphonies were likely behind him – instead of facing the possibility of artistic decline, he offed himself. Jonah was unable to even start creating, the muse always evading him, stuck piecing together someone else’s music, and fleeing before he has the chance to show much as finish it properly. The fear of failure was enough to stop them both, one before he even started, the other after he’d already succeeded.

It’s a pretty grim statement, all things considered, but also a really interesting one when it comes to where this show stands as part of both Pemberton and Shearsmith’s legacy and work – with the show coming to an end, there have been plenty of (well-deserved) adulatory articles declaring it the best anthology show of all time, and that’s a lot to live up to. I can imagine that looking down the road to the rest of their careers might feel intimidating in light of that, and this episode seems to be some kind of reflection on it – but, at the same time, serves as a comment on the need to do it anyway. Allowing either unfulfilled potential or the fear of creative decline and stagnation lands both Jonah and Burnham with nothing. Whether their best work is behind them or in front of them, they’re paralysed by fear, and it ultimately costs them.

Curse of the Ninth works, for me, brilliantly as an episode as it stands, but the positioning of this as the second-to-last episode of the final season is a really interesting and reflective one – something I’m looking forward to comparing to next week’s final (gulp, sob) episode. What did you think of Curse of the Ninth? I’m really curious to hear your comments – I get the feeling that this will be a divisive one, given the comedic elements and the horror tone coming together. Hope into the comments below and let me know!

If you liked this article and want to see more stuff like it, please check out the rest of my Inside No. 9 reviews. I’d also love it if you would check out my horrible short story collection, and, if you’d like to support my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

(header image via BBC)