Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton, Sophie Okonedo, Robin Weaver, Siobhan Redmond, Coco-Lili Hoder.

The space between the writer and their creation is one so small that they can often overlap, they become one and the same, the observation of one enhances the act of the other, and in this merging of souls the space narrows to the most infinite of spaces possible.

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane”, and the writer Philip K. Dick certainly seemed to embrace that theory, as do most artists who seek to explain the darkness that overshadows them, that makes them bring beings into existence that shouldn’t be seen, that should never be taken out of the bottom draw.

Stephen King acknowledged the spirit and absorption of two souls in his novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, of the writer and their creation occupying a certain space in Time where they both exist in the flesh, and in time honoured tradition by the creative team of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, Inside No. 9 takes it onwards to another plane of experience as the episode Nine Lives Kat lives in a world within worlds, a place where they really test the viewer’s senses of what is real, and what is the illusion of the writer.

The place where the writer ends and the creation takes over is an extension of the moment when the public know and revere the character more than the writer, the ownership undergoes transformation, and the writer, unless they are fortunate, unless their name becomes synonymous with the genre, fades into the background. This place is an artist’s purgatory, and one that will, in the same vein as Roald Dahl, see Messer’s Sheersmith and Pemberton live long beyond their creations, but Nine Lives Kat might push that belief further than anything else they penned yet.

There will be commentators who perhaps will be lost by the tale, by the concern of the extensional crisis at hand, perhaps not wanting to believe that the deeper the thought of artistic pursuit leads to a kind of psychosis, a pleasant one perhaps in terms of creativity but still one that induces a tension that the creation is seen as more important than the writer. Pay no heed to the detractors, this tale wags furiously and with honour. 

This dark reveal is captured perfect by the cast, the presence of the mind locked in battle to recognise that it is free is one of powerful writing, and Nine Lives Kat, whilst some will argue is one being too clever, in reality, it is one that will cause the viewer to question existence, will resurrect the old argument of which is more important, the creator, or the creation.

A superb tale of imagination, Inside No. 9 at its stirring best.

Ian D. Hall