The Cutprice Guignol

After a curious stylistic sidestep in last week’s Zanzibar, we’re back to the core of Inside No. 9: the creative partnership between Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith.

Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room is basically a two-hander shared between both writers – Pemberton plays Len, one half of the comedy duo Cheese and Crackers that split decades earlier, who has managed to convince his one-time partner Tommy (Shearsmith) to perform one last show together.

This is, notably, the episode that won Steve Pemberton a BAFTA for his performance, and it’s not hard to see why. There are just a handful of these episodes that basically feature only Pemberton and Shearsmith, and, despite Inside No. 9’s frequently-brilliant guest ensembles, it’s hard to replicate the sheer chemistry between the two. Given their own long-running creative and, indeed, comedic partnership, the depth to these performances are spot-on, even if they ended up in a very different place to Cheese and Crackers. I think either could have scooped a major award for this episode – Shearsmith’s curt but nostalgic turn is more restrained, but has just as much depth as Pemberton’s more raw and hopeful performance – but their partnership here is the selling point, a true joy to watch.

Where the episode soars, for me, is in the tragicomic back-and-forth between Shearsmith and Pemberton that fills out most of the second act. As they go through some of their previous sketches, reflecting on their history in comedy and the way the industry has changed since their brief sniff of success decades before, they find this pitch-perfect balance between the tragedy of what’s been lost and the inherent comic absurdity of their one-time hits. Those moments where they come together, slotting in to their previous roles as they did years before, are punched through by little shots of Pemberton adding booze to his tea, the comedy and the desperation piling up on top of each other till it’s hard to figure out where one ends and the other begins.

I’m not a huge fan of the ending, to be honest – it errs on the side of melodramatic to me, that reveal that Len has been dead all along and Tommy has been interacting with an imagined version of him to manage his own grief. The show always comes with a twist, of course, and I see the function of it here – adding to the tragedy of the episode, as we realise that all of these things will remain unsaid, Tommy never able to share the truth of why he chose to do what he did – but I’m not entirely convinced by the way it plays out, especially not the final song.

But it’s still, overall, a really solid episode of the show, and a treat of a double-hander for the creators – it reminds me a little of Curse of the Ninth, as an episode that contains a kind of meta-narrative about Pemberton and Shearsmith as creators, and that’s a sincerely good thing. Where does this episode rank for you? Do you think it’s the performance that most deserved major awards’ recognition, or do you think there are better performances from these two that should have earned it instead? Let me know in the comments!

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 Dodo’s Words)