page_title: Sardines (Inside No. 9)
section_title: Development and production
hierarchical_section_title: Sardines (Inside No. 9) / Development and production
caption_attribution_description: Reece Shearsmith
context_page_description: "Sardines" is the first episode of British dark comedy anthology series Inside No. 9. Written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, it premiered on BBC Two and BBC Two HD on 5 February 2014. In the episode, a group of adults play sardines at an engagement party. Rebecca, the bride-to-be, finds a boring man named Ian in a wardrobe; he introduces himself as a colleague of Jeremy, Rebecca's fiancé. The pair are subsequently joined by family, friends and colleagues of Rebecca and Jeremy. As more people enter the room and step into the wardrobe, secrets shared by some of the characters are revealed, with various allusions to incestuous relationships, child sexual abuse and adultery. The humour is both dark and British, with references to past unhappiness and polite but awkward interactions.
  The story takes place entirely in the bedroom of a country house, with much of the filming taking place inside the wardrobe. Pemberton and Shearsmith wrote the episode with the intention of evoking a feeling of claustrophobia in viewers.
context_section_description: Writers Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, who had previously worked together on The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville, took inspiration for Inside No. 9 from "David and Maureen", episode 4 of the first series of Psychoville, which was in turn inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. "David and Maureen" took place entirely in a single room, and it was filmed in only two shots. The writers were keen to explore other stories in this bottle episode or TV play format, and Inside No. 9 allowed them to do this. At the same time, the concept of Inside No. 9 was a "reaction" to Psychoville, with Shearsmith saying that "We'd been so involved with labyrinthine over-arcing, we thought it would be nice to do six different stories with a complete new house of people each week. That's appealing, because as a viewer you might not like this story, but you've got a different one next week."
  The format of the series also pays homage to Tales of the Unexpected, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Pemberton and Shearsmith returned to writing more macabre stories, according to the latter, as they "always feel slightly unfulfilled if [they] write something that's purely comedic, it just feels too frivolous and light". During the filming of "Sardines", Shearsmith professed excitement to be working on Inside No. 9, saying that "being in the middle of filming a third series of Psychoville would be utterly depressing". Pemberton and Shearsmith aimed for a simpler experience than Psychoville, describing "Sardines" by saying the episode is "just about some good actors in a wardrobe with a good story". As each episode of Inside No. 9 features new characters, the writers were able to attract actors who might have been unwilling to commit to an entire series. In addition to Pemberton and Shearsmith, "Sardines" starred Katherine Parkinson, Tim Key, Luke Pasqualino, Ophelia Lovibond, Anne Reid, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Anna Chancellor, Marc Wootton, Ben Willbond and Timothy West. West had previously starred in Tales of the Unexpected, and Shearsmith said that, due to this prior appearance, "it was a great nod" to have West in the episode. "Sardines" has more characters than any other episode of the first series, and these characters were written before casting took place. Pemberton recalls the fun he had in selecting a cast for the episode, aiming to bring together a very varied group of actors who would work well as a group.
  Pemberton described the concept of "Sardines" as "a simple idea", and he was happy that the pair did not "have to worry about the consequences of it", due to the format of the series. The writers were inspired by a large wardrobe in their workspace. They had already written several other episodes for the series, and confinement was a recurring theme; the possibility of putting characters into a wardrobe gave them the opportunity to develop the theme to a more extreme level. The story was not initially about the game of sardines. Pemberton said that the writers "talked about various ideas of why [the characters] were in a wardrobe", but that the pair "were certainly not working out [their] Freudian psychobabble". A list of characters was written before the script, and the script included the introduction of a new character every three pages.
  "Sardines" was written so that a feeling of claustrophobia would develop as the story progressed; Pemberton said that "our first consideration was, 'Can we get 12 people in a wardrobe?' So when we did the script read-through, the designer bought a wardrobe off eBay and we checked whether we could all get in it and shut the door". Writers for Broadcast described seeing the assortment of actors "crammed inside an imposing wardrobe" during filming as "an arresting spectacle". The story is filmed from within a single bedroom, with much of it taking place inside the wardrobe. Filming presented a particular challenge, as the aim was to give the impression that the viewer was in the wardrobe with the characters, and not to "cheat" by giving the impression that the viewer was outside the wardrob
caption: Reece Shearsmith (pictured in 2003) co-wrote "Sardines" and starred as the flamboyant Stuart
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