Reece Shearsmith makes self-satisfied and frightened men funny without making them safe company. His writing with Steve Pemberton is strongest when the cruelty leaves room for sadness; Inside No. 9 is where we would start.
Fi1m perspective
In Inside No. 9 (2014), Reece Shearsmith often plays men who are painfully pleased with themselves or frightened of saying what they mean. He and Steve Pemberton make that awkwardness funny, then allow it to become uncomfortable enough to sustain a story. Their strongest writing gives these people something to lose, rather than merely arranging for them to be caught out. The series is the best work they have made together, though its fondness for a final surprise can get the better of it.
The League of Gentlemen (1999) had already made its fictional northern town frightening through the people who lived there. Shearsmith, Pemberton and Mark Gatiss play almost everyone in Royston Vasey, with Jeremy Dyson sharing the writing. We rate it highly, but the first two series return to familiar jokes more often than they should. The third series, in 2002, tells six separately plotted half-hours, each following one character through the same week. That change matters: the characters now have to sustain stories, and the programme becomes colder and quieter.
Psychoville (2009), another writing and performing partnership with Pemberton, followed with an interlocking dark-comedy mystery. Inside No. 9 then gave them a fresh story each half-hour, without the need to keep the same people going. The opener puts Timothy West in a wardrobe and gives his dignity as much attention as the joke. We were unexpectedly moved by West in that wardrobe, because he makes the effort to preserve his dignity look so difficult. Shearsmith and Pemberton are often called clever for their plotting, but this care with a character matters more to us.
His mixture of comedy and unease also serves him in Ben Wheatley's period horror A Field in England (2013), where he plays Whitehead. Yet the work he writes with Pemberton gives us the clearest reason to seek him out, and the clearest view of his weaknesses. The least satisfying Inside No. 9 episodes spend too much of their half-hour preparing the last shot, until the people become less interesting than the puzzle. Start with that series, but do not make guessing the ending your chief occupation.
Biography
Reece Shearsmith is a British actor, comedian and writer. Born on 27 August 1969 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, he attended Andrew Marvell High School and Bretton Hall College of Education, where he met Mark Gatiss and Steve Pemberton.
Shearsmith was a member of The League of Gentlemen, alongside Pemberton, Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson. The group began as a stage act in 1995, moved to radio in 1997 and to television in 1999, winning a British Academy Television Award, a Royal Television Society Award and the Golden Rose of Montreux. With Pemberton, he created, wrote and starred in the sitcom Psychoville and the anthology series Inside No. 9.
He appeared as Dexter in two episodes of the series Spaced (1999). Other credits include roles in Shaun of the Dead (2004), The World's End (2013) and Saltburn (2023).
