Inside No. 9’s 2018 Halloween special ups the ante in how it plays with its audience, even in its recording format
“Apparently it’s a BBC Two sort of comedy thing”
I remember some of the kerfuffle around Inside No. 9’s 2018 Halloween special Dead Line but didn’t pay it much attention as it was outwith my interest at the time. Reading about it now, it does seem like a particularly ingenious way for Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith to play with their audience and hindsight means that it is impossible to tell whether or not you would have been sucked into their manipulations (although let’s face it, you almost certainly would).
Posited as a live special, it starts with an intriguing proposal as per, Pemberton’s Arthur Flitwick finding a phone and trying to return it to its owner. He dials the last number on there and speaks to Stephanie Cole’s Moira who knows exactly whose phone it is, her church friend Elsie, and recommends trying to get in touch with Shearsmith’s Reverend Neil to track Elsie down. But as the sound begins to cut out and technical issues force the announcer to intervene over the test screen, it is clear something is awry.
Quite what that is slowly spelled out through a collage of ideas and images. A previous episode is plugged in once the live episode is abandoned but that one gets pulled after technical issues arise there too, live clips of other shows going wrong at Granada Studios pop up, live CCTV catches Shearsmith and Pemberton having a bitch about the problems and turning to Twitter, all haunted by the image of spooky spirits. The tension winds up, affecting everyone, not even the announcer is safe.
It’s all very well done but watching it after the fact does reduce its effectiveness, everything gained from the liveness of the original is naturally muted. But it is still fascinating to watch and then read about, seeing how intricate the plans were to try and fool people, even seeding articles in tabloid newspapers.
