Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith "don't know" what to do after the conclusion of 'Inside No. 9' .
Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith are bringing Inside No. 9 to an end
The comedy writing duo will star in the finale of their hit BBC anthology show when it is broadcast on Tuesday (11.06.24) after nine series on air and now Steve, 56, has admitted they both just feel "lucky" to have got so far with the project to begin with.
He told The Guardian's Saturday magazine: "We don't know what the future holds but we're ready to move on. We've been so lucky. Not many people have these opportunities. 'Inside No 9' has been a whole lifetime's showreel of what we can do. There's a sense of great pride in what we've achieved."
The 'Benidorm' star and his co-writer had been searching for something new to do after their hit sketch show 'League of Gentlemen' came to an end in the early 2000s and ended up pitching the series on the spot, with the idea that it would reflect the sort of single-story format that had been popular in the 1960s.
He said: "We always liked the idea of doing something like the 'Play of the Week'. It felt very retro but in being so retro it felt fresh, because that style of programming had fallen out of favour."
Reece added: "We thought: 'Let's get back to that sort of telly - a kind of 'Tales of the Unexpected' show where we get a different story every week.
"We'd always been told, even through our sketch show writing years in 'The League of Gentlemen' that you need to have something [in the show] that comes back.
"Something that is not resetting each time. So it felt like a hard sell but we just slipped into it because the BBC trusted us by then."