‘If you’re going to cry, cry tears of laughter,” they sing. “Your funny bone can never break in two.” The lyrics are from an Inside No 9 episode looking back at the lives of an old school, end-of-the-pier double act. But they’re recycled in this evening-with tour, in which creators Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith answer soft-bat questions about the making of that show. In essence, it’s a behind-the-scenes chat for fans of the series. But the underscore is a hymn to the pair’s friendship, as slide shows unspool of their lives in front of and behind the camera, and as they rise from their armchairs to perform song-and-dance set pieces that wouldn’t make an end-of-the-pier double act blush.
The chat itself is entertaining enough. Pemberton and Shearsmith – suited, booted and prim like a showbiz Gilbert and George – seem like good eggs, with the former raconteur-ing answers to questions, and the latter making catty remarks from the sidelines. Shearsmith’s resentment of Black Mirror is well worked for comic effect, so too his sense that Inside No 9 is now so cosily well established, it’s practically Countryfile. Mark Salisbury, writer of a guide to the series, is a subdued interviewer but the format looks after itself, as individual Inside No 9 episodes are drawn from a hat and lovingly recalled.
Tonight, we learn that Jack Whitehall got motion sickness filming the episode La Couchette, that the BBC scoped turning the same series’ Nana’s Party into a primetime sitcom, and that the line between stealing and “homage” is permeable. Questions are taken from the crowd in act two, which sync, conveniently enough, with anecdotes and slides the duo have prepared. Pemberton and Shearsmith don wigs and sing Chess chart-topper I Know Him So Well, to a backdrop of sentimental snapshots of their lives together. As with their story about staging their own deaths each day at the office, just for laughs, the touching impression arises of a fond and fruitful creative partnership, the warmth of which stands in intriguing counterpoint to the psychologically twisted comedy that’s made their name.
