Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith, Anita Dobson, Phil Daniels.

It’s too late to ask your parents to reveal their secrets when they have left this mortal coil, but what lengths would you go to ask them for the truth when they are in Heaven or Hell, or the Limbo in between.

In typical resounding style, Inside No.9’s Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith take the opportunity to delve into the realm of the nightmare and the visionary in the latest episode of the successfully long running series, wonderfully titled, Mother’s Ruin.

There is still a resistance in our collective D.N.A. when it comes to the idea of necromancy, even as tool of humour, and the brilliance of the episode, which sees Messers Pemberton and Shearsmith take on the roles of brothers who are left with no choice but to use the dark art to restore the spirit of their mother on the first anniversary of her untimely passing, and to ask her of the whereabouts of the money she, and their father, stole in their lifetime.

There have been some tremendous highs in this particularly outstanding series, the years of knowledge that both men inhabit in the art of suspense and writing wonderfully diverse characters, and Mother’s Ruin is a classic example of peaking the tale at exactly the right time and in the manner befitting of the premise.

To truncate an expression by the great Stephen King, “If I can’t terrify the reader, then I aim to gross them out” and that is exactly how this short tale of betrayal and dishonour plays out in the most enduring way.

With the addition of Anita Dobson, playing a woman obsessed with True Crime podcasts, especially women who kill, and the legendary Phil Daniels as her crime connected husband, the stage is set for the dark arts being overshadowed with sublime intuition by that of the moment in which the gross out is king.

When you are conjuring up the dead, beware, for they have nothing to lose by committing to the truth, for what does it gain them to lie. The spirits that lead to a Mother’s Ruin are mischievous and presented with outrageous belief as Inside No 9. returns with vengeance.

Ian D. Hall