‘Our minds have to be endlessly inventive’
Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s darkly twisted tales return to BBC2 for a star-studded new series…
What can we expect from series five? STEVE, 52: I’d say it’s the most varied season we’ve done.
REECE, 50: I hope so, yeah. I was away when series four went out so I didn’t see it, but I think more people were watching it. Hopefully for series five we’ve managed to create an intriguing collection of stories that are enjoyable and surprising to watch.
STEVE: We were blessed in having the 1-3 box-set go on
BBC iPlayer and that was a huge wake-up call because people started recommending it, and word-of-mouth played a huge part. It became a bigger thing… Episode one is set in a referee’s changing room…
STEVE: It’s a space that probably most of us don’t think about very often, but it just struck us as a really interesting idea to set an episode there. I’m amazed at how much we packed into 30 minutes. REECE: On paper, as a non-kind of football fan, that was the one I was least looking forward to but actually it’s a really rich episode with so much going for it.
Where do the ideas come from? STEVE: We start with shuffling through the old books and seeing if there are any scraps that we talked about but didn’t necessarily go with. Sometimes, an idea is great – but if it’s too similar to one you’ve already written you’ll bank it for a future episode as you don’t want too much of the same flavour in one series.
REECE: We always start with a lot of talking. There’s always a story lurking somewhere. Small ideas that we had ages ago can often return bearing fruit – but it gets harder because we’ve already done so much. You just have to have an endlessly inventive, fertile mind.
Last year’s live episode was a huge hit – would you do another one?
REECE: I don’t think we would, just because people would compare them or say we’ve run out of ideas. We try to stay unpredictable, which gets harder because people expect our funny little games. The biggest challenge with the Halloween Special was keeping what we were really going to do a secret. But we were very careful and no one who knew wanted to spoil it.
Do your celeb pals approach you and ask to be in it?
REECE: I mean, Dave Morrissey has been saying to us for ages that he would love to be involved, and interestingly with his episode it’s one of only two we’ve done which are all-male casts. All the guest actors have been great. Some of them we know already; others we have just admired from afar. Acting has to be fun and people are entering a positive workplace. Everyone just wants to go the extra mile, and it helps when people recognise they’re working on something good.
Do you have a favourite episode? REECE: It’s like choosing a favourite child! I can’t choose.
I’m surprised that Bernie
Clifton’s Dressing Room took such a grip on people. We thought it was good but we didn’t think it was this amazing, heartfelt story…
STEVE: There are loads I’m really proud of, but I’m very proud of it as a whole body of work. Each day I have a different favourite.