Nine While Nine:Inside No.9 S1.

"Do you remember a time when angels? Do you remember a time when fear? In the days when I was stronger. In the days when you were here" - Nine While Nine, Sisters of Mercy

Between 2011 and 2014 I didn't, quite remarkably it seems to many, have a working television. So I missed the first ever episode of Reece Shearsmith's and Steve Pemberton's black comedy anthology Inside No. 9. Since then I've seen several, well a few, episodes but I've never really sat down and watched them all back to back. 

When series six aired earlier this year, and the five earlier series' all reappeared on the iPlayer, I decided it was time to finally do so - and time, too, to write about it. I knew I liked it (Shearsmith and Pemberton are always good and the few episodes I had seen had not disappointed me) so instead of just writing about how much I liked it or writing about what happened in each episode (they are all half-hour long standalone short stories, often featuring multiple guest stars along with Pemberton and/or Shearsmith) I thought I'd, instead, list, in reverse order, my favourite show from each series.

In a personal, even arbitrary, way. Starting with the worst one (which certainly doesn't mean it's bad) and going on to reveal my favourite. If anyone is left reading by then. If anyone ever started in fact. The only episode I can remember seeing from the first series is A Quiet Night In. I'd enjoyed it so the fact I rate it as the least impressive of the six probably says something about the overall quality of Inside No.9.

In an episode that features almost no dialogue whatsoever, Shearsmith and Pemberton play slightly clumsy burglars with a design on a fancy modernist house. Inside the house we meet Gerald (Denis Lawson) and Sabrina (Oona Chaplin) as well as their home help Kim (Joyce Veheary). Gerald and Sabrina are soon so engrossed in eating soup, watching Eastenders, listening to Rachmaninoff, and fighting over the TV remote that they don't even notice when the flailing thieves break in.

We see the pair of crooks hiding, trying (unsuccessfully) to text each other quietly, and comically failing to steal certain objects. They're almost like Laurel and Hardy  but when Paul (Kayvan Novak) knocks on the door hoping to sell his cleaning goods there's a twist (as there so often is in Inside No.9) and it's not the only one.

Badfinger's version of Without You plays out over the closing credits. Last Gasp throws its twist in early and acts, more than any of the other episodes in series one, more as a morality lesson than anything else. Or at least a play that asks us to question our own morality in a money and celebrity driven world.

Graham (Pembeton) and Jan (Sophie Thomson) live in a suburban cul-de-sac with their terminally ill daughter Tamsin - or Tam-Tam (Lucy Hutchinson). As a special birthday treat they've arranged to have bland, Michael Buble style, pop crooner Frankie J Parsons (David Bedella) round to meet her but when Frankie, who Jan seems much more a fan of than Tamsin, collapses and dies blowing up a balloon Graham soon realises he could make some money out of his misfortune.

The problem is so do Frankie's personal assistant Si (Adam Deacon) and Sally (a brilliantly icy Tamsin Greig) who is there as a representative of Wishmaker UK who have arranged the visit. I laughed when Jan mistakenly thought Billy Joel sang La Bamba but, other than that, Last Gasp was actually quite dry. Yet very watchable.

Sometimes Inside No.9 goes so dark that it can slightly overlook the comedy aspect but that's not the case with Sardines, the first ever episode of the show. For the first twenty or so minutes it's funny and then, towards the end, it takes a very dark turn which includes a brilliant and chilling twist.

Rebecca (Katherine Parkinson) and Jeremy (Ben Willibond) are hosting an awkward engagement party (some of the guests would clearly rather not be there) in their father Andrew's (Timothy West) large stately home. As kids, they'd always play the titular game of sardines there and, for old time's sake, they're doing it again. Soon the cupboard Rebecca is first to start hiding in is full to bursting.

She's joined by her uptight brother Carl (Pemberton) and his camp partner (Shearsmith may be in cupboard but he's certainly not in the closet), Jeremy's attractive ex rachel (Ophelia Lovibond), and office bore Ian (Tim Key) who gets to deliver an amusing, because it's so out of character, line when he tells Rebecca to "chill out, bitch". 

Also in the game, and thus the cupboard, are Jeremy and Ian's boss Mark (Julian Rhind-Tutt), his partner Elizabeth (Anna Chancellor), and an old school friend who goes by the name of Stinky John (Marc Wootton). Between Stuart's jokes about bumming and Carl failing to get wood, a terrible secret is gradually revealed that involves both cub scouts and carbolic soap.

The ending chilled me far more than the more traditional horror of the well acclaimed series finale The Harrowing. Something of a Hammer spoof, we're invited to a large, cold, dark gothic house made of stone. Its inhabitants are spooky Hector (Shearsmith) and Tabitha (Helen McCrory) as well as the bedridden, and severely disabled - he's said not to have a mouth which makes it hard to understand how he consumes the milk and rusks that constitute his diet, Andras (Sean Buckley), Hector's brother.

Because of Andras, or perhaps for other reasons, Hector and Tabitha never go out. Until the night the show takes place where an unnamed event is simply too important for them to miss. So Katy (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) is employed as a carer and house sitter for the night. Katy invites her goth friend Shell (Poppy Rush) round and Shell, of course, loves the bleak gothic nature of the house.

Not least the stairlift, which she describes as being like "Chessington for old people" (though it reminded me of a scene in William Castle's terrifying 1961 film Homicidal, a Psycho rip-off but I didn't know that when I saw it as a kid). The house is full of grisly Hieronymus Bosch style paintings of hellish religious scenes, a bell rings ominously, there's salt around one of the beds, and the word 'mischief' is delivered in a very threatening way. It gets eerie but there's still time for a funny line when Shell mixes up Po (the Teletubby) with Poe (Edgar Allan).

The Harrowing is good but I had such high hopes for it couldn't ever live up to them. That's why I preferred The Understudy. The Understudy introduces us to frustrated actor Tony Warner (Pemberton). He's playing Macbeth at the Duke of Cambridge theatre but he's also doing voice overs for tampon adverts . He's jealous of his fellow actors and desperate to play Uncle Vanya at the Donmar.

His understudy Jim (Shearsmith) would be happy for Warner to move on too. He's keen on getting Warner's gig and his fiancee Laura (Lyndsey Marshall), the Lady Macbeth understudy, is even more ambitious than he is. It seems inevitable from the start that they will soon 'inhabit' their intended roles in very real ways.

Not least when Tony gets pissed, vomits on stage, and swears at Banquo. Set into 'acts' (introduced with roman numerals of course, who could be so pretentious?), there's a very weird joke about David Suchet shitting himself, a very rude one about fingering, and a brilliant cameo by Rosie Cavaliero as Tony's dresser Kirstie.

The twist, of course, is exquisite. The second best in the series. It's also, in my opinion, the second best episode. My favourite was the unpromisingly titled Tom & Gerri. Tom (Shearsmith) is a primary school teacher who lives with his girlfriend Gerri (Gemma Arterton plays an aspiring actor) and while carrying out some perfunctory and highly unprofessional marking becomes slightly obsessed with a tramp, or 'indigent', that he can see from his window.

Migg (Pemberton) soon enough appears at Tom's door to return Tom's lost wallet and Tom, retrospectively unwisely, invites him in for a drink. When Migg reveals he's met Tom's hero, Charles Bukowski, more whisky follows - and then even more. 

The drinking reaches levels Bukowski himself would be proud of. Soon enough Tom is missing work, has lost his phone, and has started to look like an Oliver Reed werewolf. Migg, too, is not who he seems to be. What does he want from Tom? A bed for the night? Company? Warmth? Or something more?

When Tom's friend from work Stevie (Conleth Hill) calls round, the extent of Tom's spiral becomes evident but what happens next is properly chilling and caught me totally off guard. I'm even chilled to the bone typing this, and thinking about it, now.

Tom & Gerri was Inside No.9 at its very best. It raised questions about homelessness, alcoholism, depression, and identity but at its heart it was simply a very spooky drama. I'm not sure if I laughed all that much throughout the whole series but I was gripped, eventually, by every episode and none more so than Tom & Gerri. I'll be starting series two soon.