Inside No 9 review – the couchette is crammed with comic characters, but I’m just not laughing

There are nightcaps, undressing, farting, pants, bodies, sex, snoring, and some more macabre cadaver business too – and Shearsmith and Pemberton exploit pretty much all of it
Dark, anarchic humour … a tight squeeze Inside No 9. Photograph: Sophie Mutevelian/BBC
Dark, anarchic humour … a tight squeeze Inside No 9. Photograph: Sophie Mutevelian/BBC

So what’s the No 9 we’re inside in Inside No 9 (BBC2) this time? Couchette No 9, on a train speeding through the night through Europe. Good one. I think a couchette naturally lends itself to humour – the noise, and the motion, the romance and the adventure, the potential for new love, death, murder. Also – mainly – the fact that it’s a place where people go to bed just a few inches from total strangers. With all the stuff associated with bed and going to it – nightcaps, undressing, farting, pants, bodies, sex, snoring etc. And of course there’s also a good chance of foreigners, so they bring all their national characteristics, stereotypes, unique foreign bodies and foreign smells to the couchette party.

Heck, I’ve even had an amusing time on the sleeper to Scotland. China was funnier though, certainly stranger … But this isn’t about me. What I’m saying is, a couchette should suit Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s finely observed, imaginative, dark, anarchic humour well. Should and does. They exploit pretty much all of the above.

So an uptight, anal, crisp pyjama-ed British medical man (Shearsmith) with eyemask and earplugs is first joined, inside couchette number 9, by a loud, leery, beery, bratwursty, gross, farty, German (Pemberton) who crashes about, emitting gas and body odour before crashing out (in the wrong bunk) emitting loud snores. Next in: a likable though also noisy English couple (Julie Hesmondhalgh and Marc Renton) on their way to their daughter’s wedding; followed by a filthy (all senses) and even noisier Aussie backpackpacker (Jessica Gunning) with an English posh twatty scoundrel (Jack Whitehall, obvs). The performances are fabulous.

Oh, and there’s one more occupant, the man in 9b, but he’s already asleep. I’m guessing he’s going to be important to the whole thing …

And I’m right, about him being important, though not about him being asleep. He is, in fact, dead. The couchette is coming good on all fronts. Very little is known about the unfortunate man, except that a photo in his wallet reveals he is an actual grossvater. But he provides a launchpad for more Shearsmith’n’Pembertonism – macabre horror, stiff-handling, cadaver spooning, that kind of thing. Oh and there’s poo too, loads of it, beery bratwursty poo. And a twist at the end as you’d expect, and then a further one. It’s like (Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected) x (Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express) x (Chris Donald’s Viz).

Now it does become about me, I’m afraid. I’m not rolling in the corridor. And that’s because I’ve never really got Shearsmith and Pemberton’s stuff – The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville were the same. It’s purely personal; humour is a pretty personal thing. I can tell how well the narrative is crafted, appreciate the art of it (God, that probably sounds pretentious), see how others find it hilarious (as the other person on this sofa apparently does). I even like all the ingredients – darkness, peculiar British banality etc. But I’m not on the same wavelength. It’s a bit like going on a date with someone who clearly ticks loads of boxes, but you realise they’re not for you because you’ll never be able to love them. I’m sure I’ll be crucified – probably quite rightly – but I don’t love Inside No 9.

If you missed Growing Up Wild: Natural World (BBC2) … well, it’s on the iPlayer, of course. But you can pretty much also see it by going to YouTube and putting in “cute baby animals” or similar. This is natural history with one aim, to make you go “ahhh”. Tiger cubs, little Tiggers, ahhh. Ducklings, so not-ugly, ahhh. Ibex kiddies, cute and brave, ahhhh…

It’s not just cute, it’s all good news too. So the ducklings jumping out of the tree all land perfectly in a soft pile of leaves, then toddle off behind their mum to the pool. Billie the Ibex escapes from the big bad fox. Dumbo, Pom, Flora and Alexander and the other young elephants all make it across the raging croc-infested torrent, just.

David Tennant’s sentimental narration only adds to the feeling that this is natural history brought to you by Disney, sponsored by Tate & Lyle and Andrex.

What happened to red in tooth and claw? And to the real world? Nothing is killed or eaten … until right at the end, when one of those tiger cubs, now grown up, catches a young deer. Nooooo, Bambi! No, venison, mmmm.