Re-visiting the UK’s radically unique horror-comedy series, ‘Psychoville,’ on the seventh anniversary of its premiere

Mixing horror and comedy is hard.

There’s a reason that the niche sub-category of horror-comedy hybrids is a hard one to nail successfully in film, and arguably an even more challenging balance on television. We might currently be experiencing a boon where everything containing a maniac or monster wielding anything that remotely resembles a machete translates to ratings gold. Television’s fascination with horror is certainly a recent one though. The landscape was certainly less accepting of horror content seven years ago, and yet Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton entered the scene machetes a-swinging with their subversive, ambitious BBC2 series, Psychoville.

It’s hard to imagine that in 2009 when Psychoville was first hitting television, this was a time that was still pre-Walking Dead. The Walking Dead would greatly help knock down barriers between horror and the mainstream, where something with mass murder could spell mass hit rather than ratings poison. We almost take programs like American Horror Story and Hannibal for granted now with how spoiled we’ve gotten over what television will allow in terms of horror and violence. Every network might have some horror indulgent program at this point (even a traditional place like CBS has BrainDead, by the creators of The Good Wife, no less), but there really wasn’t anything like this going on in 2009. Sure, occasional horror parody programs like Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Dead Set had come along, or other titles that would broach the supernatural, such as Being Human or Doctor Who, which would occasionally tap into that horror vein. That being said, Psychoville feels like a much more significant title, not only for the horror-comedy genre, but also in terms of pushing the medium a little closer to acceptance of the macabre.

An important reason why all of this works so well is that it’s abundantly clear that Shearsmith and Pemberton have an enormous respect for horror. This isn’t them embracing a genre because they thought that it would be topical, it’s them doing a horror show because it’s been something that’s been trying to burst out of them like a xenomorph alien for years now. Shearsmith and Pemberton’s previous series, The League of Gentleman, was a sketch show but it would still manage to find ways to shift to the more disturbing side of the spectrum. Segments like, “Papa Lazarou” show the horror influence begging to come out. So it’s not surprising that Psychoville would be a show that contains ballads praising the crème de la crème of serial killers, an extensive Hitchcock homage, or an argument that lambasts The Exorcist II: The Heretic.

Paramount of all of that too, Psychoville is also a horror show about horror. It doesn’t just delight in scaring you but it makes it the focus of the storytelling in order to heighten everything. David and Mauren Sowerbutts are two serial-killer obsessed characters that are sponges of horror knowledge. They keep the topic of death constant and unavoidable in the show. Another central character, Mr. Jelly, is a children’s clown that isn’t on the surface scary. That being said, this being a horror show and audiences being so conditioned to recognize creepy clowns as red flags, he connects on a horror level without even trying. The show operates on this level in a number of ways, where instinctively the many disparate elements paint a much more sinister picture.

Part of what makes Psychoville such an entertaining ride is the way in which it sneaks up on you. The series begins as a humble I Know What You Did Last Summer parody with an eclectic cast of characters spanning from a telekinetic dwarf, a blind eBay hound, and a nurse who believes a doll is her child, all receive letters saying, “I know what you did…” It’s funny that while we currently do have a Scream television series, a show based on I Know What You Did Last Summer wouldn’t be the worst idea out there. As much as Psychoville pokes fun at the idea (and its opening scene involving a cross word puzzle is really the perfect distillation of what this show is all about), it also genuinely engages it and tries to take it to new places .

The series slowly unravels the mystery of how these people are connected, but that’s really just the tip of the bloodied icepick here. The series ping-pongs from psychotic librarians, to Nazi resurrection, and everything in between. The problem with parody series is that they can so often run out of steam or just fall to pieces after that initial conceit is fulfilled. There’s a reason that similar programs in this territory don’t make it beyond a single season, or how recent programs like Scream Queens or even Ash Vs. The Evil Dead reboot themselves to stay fresh. It’s as if Psychoville feels like it can never stop moving though because as soon as answers are revealed, the show is not afraid to literally explode the status quo and create a drastically different second season. The show is smart to realize when the parody angle has played itself out and instead turn to slowly embracing its own twisted mythology and shedding the baggage of the former.

Many horror series—especially those in the comedy realm—lack impact because of their reluctance to kill off central characters or have the danger truly be felt. Psychoville acts pretty flagrantly in opposition to this rule, almost as if its trying to kill off as much of its cast as possible. It’s like it’s playing a game of chicken with its audience. The series wisely uses its limited-episode count to dole out fatalities in a meaningful way as the program simultaneously marks a regime change from the characters of the first season of the show and those that are the focus in the second year. The series also has a Halloween Special that takes place between the huge cliffhanger between seasons that also very cleverly bridges things.

The Special takes place concurrently with the events of the first season’s finale, expanding on “old” material in an exciting way that perfectly segues into the second season. It’s also just wonderful that the series has a Halloween Special versus a Christmas Special, which is so often the case with British programming. This slight subversion is in perfect tone with the series—of course they’d have a Halloween Special—with the four-pronged anthology tale actually being legitimately frightening. Territory like The Ring, The Howling and more get sent up beautifully. You could straight up watch it in October amongst a mix of horror classics and it’d fit right in. Shearsmith and Pemberton’s horror fandom has never been stronger than within this holiday-themed gem.

It’s also worth noting that this truly bizarre cast of weirdos is predominantly played entirely be Shearsmith and Pemberton themselves. The two of them both take on a staggering upwards of five characters apiece, and for the most part you’d have no idea it was them. The second season even adds additional characters to their rosters, with neither of them flinching at the challenge. This all hits a little harder on a pre-Orphan Black television landscape and feels like the perfect evolution of the pair’s sketch comedy roots.

The innovation at work here wouldn’t go unrecognized as Psychoville won the 2009 British Comedy Award for “Best New British TV Comedy.” This was certainly a significant step forward for the series, as well as when its final season would receive the award for “Best Comedy Drama.” It even beat out the likes of other series like Mifits and Fresh Meat, which are certainly successful titles. In spite of the polarizing, more uncomfortable subject matter that this comedy would get into, it was still seeing recognition for its challenging subject matter. This is by no means a case of Psychoville single handedly opening up the market—particularly over in the UK—to horror programming. But with the strides taken here, the genre would certainly become a more approachable topic. If this show could go where it does and still work, then so could other content. The dark material that it wades in is also no doubt a precursor to the arguably darker places Shearsmith and Pembrton have taken comedy in their follow-up series, Inside No. 9. If they couldn’t test the waters with Psychoville, who knows if they would even feel comfortable enough going to the places that they do in No. 9.

Between the incredulous, sprawling storyline, astonishing multiple roles being played, and the unique sense of humor on display, Psychoville would still manage to shake things up in other ways, too. Detours like deranged clown courtroom dream sequences, the world of dwarf theater, or the unsettling Silent Singer are all examples of what a one-of-a-kind show this is. In the series’ most dazzling accomplishment (and one that most of television in general has struggled to pull off), a glowing tribute to Alfred Hitchock’s Rope sees a first-season episode being entirely done in a “single,” unbroken take. It’s one of the most impressive episodes of television that I’ve ever seen, and the fact that it’s an ode to one of the best horror directors out there makes it even better.

It’s interesting to think on the matter that if Psychoville were to premiere now that it would likely find an even larger audience. Even re-airing the series in a US marketplace could hold tremendous cache for the property now. Furthermore, with television’s ever-changing climate it’s possible that the show would end up being even darker if it were to be made today—probably skewing closer in tone to Inside No. 9. It would definitely feel less inclined to fall back on the comedy of the series at the end of the day, which could have led to a really interesting tone for the show, too. As horror from both Stateside and otherwise continues to thrive, check out this underseen treasure for something truly different and genuinely unlike anything else you’ve seen before. If nothing else, it’s an excuse to get Black Lace’s “Superman” stuck in your head.