Inside No.9 on BBC2: Hull-born master of the macabre Reece Shearsmith and partner Steve Pemberton back with tales of the unexpected

They are responsible for some of TV’s darkest creations, from the grotesque villagers in The League Of Gentlemen to a hook-handed clown and a murderous man-child in Psychoville. Now Hull-born Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton are back with a new BBC Two comedy series Inside No. 9, which promises to be just as deliciously macabre.

Written by and starring the pair, the show consists of six standalone stories about the peculiar goings-on at different houses with the same door number.

With genres ranging from gothic horror to psychological thriller, the series is, as Shearsmith promises, “undiluted us”.

So it comes as a surprise to meet the talented duo and discover they seem really rather normal.

There is not a prosthetic limb or fake blood capsule in sight as Shearsmith and Pemberton sit side by side in a BBC office, checking their phones and chatting quietly before the interview begins.

Life outside work also sounds fairly typical for the pair, who met at college and went on to form The League Of Gentlemen with friends Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson.

“We have lunch a lot. We both have kids in the same school and we live very close to each other, so we see each other pretty much all the time,” says Pemberton, who has three children – Lucas, 13, Madeleine, 11, and Adam, eight – with partner Alison.

But the Blackburn-born 46-year-old soon admits that, a bit like the homes in Inside No. 9, things are not completely average in his household.

“I’ve got three severed heads in my study which we used in Psychoville. One is my face and head carved into a pumpkin, which is quite horrible,” he reveals.

“The kids take it in their stride really. That’s what their dad does.”

Pemberton’s children are yet to watch his darker work, while Hull-born Shearsmith, 44, is also protective of his children, Danny, nine, and Holly, 11, with wife Jane.

“I’m quite puritanical – they’ve not seen anything I’ve done, apart from Horrible Histories. They know I do weird things. I think they’ve seen some pictures of League Of Gentlemen, but they haven’t watched it yet.

“They’ll have a treat, a back catalogue when they’re old enough. When they’re about 25,” he laughs.

Pemberton adds: “When I was 13, I’d watched horror films I Spit On Your Grave and The Exorcist. There wasn’t the same control as now. Parents didn’t know what you were doing. You’d go down to the video library and get whatever you want.

“We’re a lot more aware of what our kids are doing and what’s going into their heads now, and that’s a good thing. But at the end of the day, we watched all that stuff.”

“And we turned out all right,” adds former Andrew Marvell School pupil Shearsmith, as the pair break into laughter.

In fact, it was their spine-tingling childhood viewing that provided the inspiration for anthology series Inside No. 9.

“It used to be such fun to watch Tales Of The Unexpected or Hammer House Of Horror and get a one-off story,” Shearsmith says.

“You can enjoy the twists and turns and the fact it’s got great character actors in, and it seemed right up our street to do that.”

The series boasts a stellar cast with appearances from veteran actor Timothy West, Bond star Helen McCrory and Hollywood darling Gemma Arterton – a bit of a coup, Pemberton admits.

“When Gemma said yes, we were quite surprised, because she’s a big movie star. She just said, ‘Well I don’t read scripts like this’ and that made us feel very excited.”

Episode one sees an eclectic bunch of party-goers play the children’s game Sardines. As guests step one by one into an old wardrobe, the atmosphere gets more and more claustrophobic – particularly when one foul-

smelling guest, Stinky John (played by comedy actor Marc Wootton), clambers in.

“Our first consideration was, ‘Can we get 12 people in a wardrobe?’ So when we did the script read-through, the designer bought a wardrobe off eBay and we checked whether we could all get in it and shut the door,” Pemberton says.

“Luckily, we all got on. It would have been awful if there had been a real Stinky John.”

There is, as can be expected from this writing duo, a chilling twist at the end of the half-hour episode. The rest of the series is also set to be full of surprises, with unlucky cat burglars, odd siblings living in a refrigerated gothic mansion, and a blood-soaked actor’s dressing room.

Shearsmith and Pemberton have plenty of more mainstream roles on their CVs – Pemberton’s credits include Doctor Who, Whitechapel and sun-soaked sitcom Benidorm, while Shearsmith is set to star alongside Sheridan Smith in ITV’s factual crime drama, The Widower.

So what makes them keep returning to the macabre?

“We always feel slightly unfulfilled if we write something that’s purely comedic, it just feels too frivolous and light,” Shearsmith says.

“Most television, you flick around and it’s all kind of the same, really.

“Not to sound arrogant, but if you stick with our things for one minute, they’re so arresting, because they’re uncompromising and have a very strong flavour and vision. You might not like it, but they’re very sure of themselves.”

Pemberton says: “Sometimes you do just want to have the TV on in the background, but as Reece said, we like things that you have to lean forward into and really concentrate on.”

“You want what you’ve done to be remarkable, and you want people to really remember it, and that’s what we’re striving for in our writing.”

The pair hope to make more instalments of Inside No. 9 (“Now we’ve got a platform for doing it, we could keep going on and on,” says Pemberton) and they’ll continue to juggle working together with appearing in separate projects.

“I’ve written things on my own and I really missed Reece being in the room to laugh – or not,” Pemberton admits, as Shearsmith nods in agreement.

“We feel lucky to have found each other.”

Inside No.9 is on BBC2 on Wednesday at 10pm