Inside No. 9’s Final Series Guest Stars Might Be Its Best Yet
Inside No. 9 is going out in style with stars of Happy Valley, Line of Duty, Derry Girls, Taskmaster & more...
As Reece Shearsmith just announced, it’s the beginning of the end for Inside No. 9. Filming on the horror-comedy anthology’s ninth and final series began in late 2023, which means a wrap on one of the BBC’s most consistently entertaining and inventive shows is imminent.
Series nine is expected to air in spring 2024, and will add a final six episodes to the existing 49 stories in Shearsmith and co-creator Steve Pemberton’s back catalogue. Barring the first look image above, which shows Pemberton in drag at an underground train station (platform no. nine?), we don’t know anything about the stories, settings or characters yet, but we do know who’ll be joining the pair as guest stars… and it’s a deep bench.
One of Britain’s greatest working actors, Eddie Marsan (The Winter King, The Power, Happy-Go-Lucky) will appear. As will the brilliant Siobhan Finneran (Downton Abbey, Alma’s Not Normal, The Other One), beloved for playing Claire in BBC One thriller Happy Valley – series one of which coincidentally starred Steve Pemberton.
Top British actors Vinette Robinson (Boiling Point, The Lazarus Project, The A-Word) and Hayley Squires (I, Daniel Blake, Adult Material, The Essex Serpent) join them, alongside Taskmaster fan-favourite Susan Wokoma (Chewing Gum, Year of the Rabbit, Enola Holmes).
Mark Bonnar, a guest star in Line of Duty’s breakthrough second series, and the excellent co-lead in BBC Scotland thriller Guilt will also appear, as will This Country’s Charlie Cooper, known for playing the hapless Kurtan alongside his sister Daisy May Cooper in their mockumentary, and Coronation Street, Class and The Long Shadow’s Katherine Kelly.
Derry Girls, Motherland and The Woman in the Wall’s Philippa Dunne will appear, along with Mum and Pennyworth’s Dorothy Atkinson, and Gavin and Stacey’s Peter Sutcliffe aka Adrian Scarborough. plus Plebs comedy star Joel Fry, seen recently playing Frenchie in Rhys Darby/Taika Waititi pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death.
And the curveball guest star of the series? That would be former Stars in Their Eyes presenter Matthew Kelly, whose cameo is a fitting one seeing as he once appeared in a 1978 episode of Play for Today, the celebrated anthology series that was one of the original inspirations for Inside No. 9.
Will any of the above end up deserving a place on our celebration of the show’s finest guest performances so far? The odds are good. We’ll bring you a release date, trailer and more info on the new episodes as soon as they’re available.
Inside No. 9 series one to eight are available to stream on BBC iPlayer now.
Written by
Louisa Mellor is the Den of Geek UK TV Editor. She has written about TV, film and books for Den of Geek since 2010, and for…