VIEW FROM OUR SOFAS
STEVE PEMBERTON & REECE SHEARSMITH
They’re shutting the door on Inside No 9, but what was it like to share a flat for real?
You obviously don’t live together, but if you did, what would the view from the sofa be?
STEVE We did live together once, in our late 20s, in a small Highgate flat with a dodgy paint job and a rickety old armchair – back when you had a VHS attached to your television. There was an Action Man figure on the top of the TV that would be posed in different ways. We would just laugh all the time.
Were there piles of dirty plates and socks everywhere?
REECE It wasn’t squalor: we used to have a rota for the washing-up. We would all stay up to watch the late-night horror double bill on BBC2.
STEVE I don’t think we ever went full Young Ones. We’d also consume a lot of daytime television. The likes of This Morning and The Time, the Place were big favourites – John Stapleton or Robert Kilroy-Silk interviewing members of the public. That was before reality television.
If you two were watching together now, who’d have the remote control?
REECE I’d give it to Steve because I don’t really watch much television. He would probably know what was on and turn it on to the right channel. I don’t tend to get involved in watching reality shows where you’re following fly-on-the-wall type of people. I can’t keep up with it.
STEVE And I’d turn off any constructed reality show. The notion that you’re half performing, half living your real life, is not my cup of tea. When you spend half your life trying to come up with creative ideas, the notion of just wandering into the bar and having a conversation… or maybe we’re missing out, Reece?
What are the funniest shows you’ve watched?
STEVE The first time I saw Big Night
Out with Vic and Bob, I thought, “Oh my God, they’re doing nothing, but everything.” I couldn’t believe how funny they were in what appeared to be utter chaos. They were absolute heroes.
REECE I remember watching The Larry Sanders Show on a double bill with Seinfeld. The character work, the darkness, being able to see both sides of the entertainment industry and, in the character of Hank, one of the all-time great losers.
You’re both northerners in your 50s, how did those formative years inspire The League of Gentleman, Psychoville and Inside No 9?
REECE We were big fans of what was on telly when we were little, which was not much, a
