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Nearly a year in the making, Inside No. 9 finishes its sixth series with 'aplomb'

Lauren O'Neill

When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the UK – and the world – in March 2019, the vast majority of television productions ground to an agonising halt. Inside No. 9 was no different: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and co. were forced to down tools in the middle of filming “The Last Night of the Proms,” the final instalment of their sixth series.

The arrival of unexpected houseguest Yusuf stokes tensions, and reveals deep seated truths.

The episode takes place at a family viewing party for – you’ve guessed it – the TV broadcast of the last night of the Proms. In typical Inside No. 9 fashion, however, the gathering goes awry – as the arrival of unexpected houseguest Yusuf (Bamshad Abedi-Amin) stokes tensions, and reveals deep seated truths.

On BBC Sounds’ Inside Inside No. 9 podcast, Shearsmith re the fractured experience of filming “The Last Night of the Proms” (which began in March 2020, and finally concluded in January 2021), pinpointing the moment in the episode which marks the actors having returned to filming. “Just after Yusuf enters the house, and I say ‘Put your hands up.’ That’s the ten months older versions of ourselves,” he recalls.

Luckily, the episode’s crew – particularly the art department – took great pains to make sure that everything was as it had been left almost a year earlier. “When you walked back onto the set in January of this year, it was incredible,” explains Pemberton.

Pemberton’s inspirations for the episode were twofold. Firstly, he was influenced by his memories of being strong armed into watching the last night of the Proms, at which the same pieces are always played – by his father. “I had a strong memory – in my house, my dad used to make us watch the last night of the Proms,” he explains. “And he just got fervently into it.” Secondly, Pemberton cites Brexit. “This probably was written early 2019, when the whole Brexit thing was very much in the air. I’m sure that a lot of that has seeped into this script,” he says.

Pemberton was influenced by memories of being strong armed into watching the last night of the Proms by his father.

In “Last Night of the Proms,” Pemberton plays Brexiteer Mick, who, along with his wife Dawn (Sarah Parish), is the host of the party. At odds with him throughout is Shearsmith’s Remainer brother-in-law character, Brian. “It was pretty clear from the off that you were going to have some people who loved the last night of the Proms,” says Pemberton. “And you definitely needed a character to counterpoint that. To [Brian] it’s not a celebration of music at all, it’s a jingoistic event that is there to big up the country.”

As one of the episode’s major sites of conflict, the music of the Proms almost became a character in itself. In fact, Shearsmith laments that it could not have been a louder presence in various scenes, due to various technical concerns. “All we ever said was, ‘When that music is on, they’re gonna be shouting over it.’ We really pushed for that driving, and not becoming meek. I think we get it. It builds and builds. But we’d have had it far louder.”

Even without the precise volume desired, achieving the intended effect on screen was a hard won process. Shearsmith elaborates: “The dialogue has to be recorded clean of the sound. So we had the music blasting out in our ears, and in the meantime, we were trying to do the dialogue alongside it. That was tricky.”

Even trickier still, however, guest star Parish tells Inside Inside No. 9, was retaining the energy of the original shoot upon the cast’s return in 2021. “It was tricky to pick up, because over those three days when we started filming, we gained a lot of momentum, and we’d sort of come, within the piece, to the heightened bit of the piece. And to stop there, and then try and pick that up again, almost a year later, was really challenging,” she says.

The episode’s final statement – about the horror inherent in small-mindedness – hits impactfully.

The actors, however, manage it seamlessly, and with aplomb, so that the episode’s final statement – about the horror inherent in small-mindedness, banality, and hypocrisy – hits impactfully.

“We wanted for it not just to be a Proms-bashing exercise,” says Pemberton. “I hope that people don’t think that all we’re doing is attacking that institution. Because the music and the celebration of the music is brilliant. It’s just what some people bring to it – especially when the EU thing happened and the Brexit thing happened. It’s a really good one to end on. It is brutally dark, but there’s really funny bits in it as well,” he adds.

“The Last Night of the Proms,” of course, marks the close of Inside No. 9’s sixth outing. For all intents and purposes, Pemberton and Shearsmith are pretty pleased with how it all shook out. “We are really happy with this series,” Shearsmith says. “Six series in, I think they’ve been really good. I think they’re some of the best ones we’ve done.”

Every episode of Inside No. 9 series six, including Last Night of the Proms, are available now on BBC iPlayer