Anthology shows have a long history on television, and some of the very best examples - The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, etc. - manage to leave lasting cultural impressions. The freedom to start every episode (or every season) with a changeup in story, characters, and/or setting can allow for some great writing and inventive storytelling. If this kind of thing is up your alley, it's time to discover what the UK already knows: Inside No. 9 is top-tier television.
Over nine seasons (6 episodes each, gotta love the Brits!) this show delivers a brilliant mix of light and darkness. Multiple genres are explored, and the stories are funny, sad, mysterious, and scary, often at the same time. In Series 2, "The 12 Days of Christine" tells the life story of an average urbanite, but only through major holiday events she experienced. A clean-up crew tackling the apartment of a deceased hoarder get much more than they bargained for in "Tempting Fate", from Series 4. One of several Christmas episodes is "The Bones of St. Nicholas", from Series 8, in which a widower professor spends the night in a possibly haunted church on Christmas Eve. The only component tying any of the stories together is a space - traincar, house, hotel room - with the number nine.
These tales frequently drift into the realm of the unsettling (or outright horror), and the comedy they feature is mostly dark, but it's not an anthology in the same vein as American Horror Story. Perhaps the most impressive aspect is the fact that Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton (who both appear in nearly every episode) created the show and wrote the entire run together. The consistency in quality is evident. If you like keeping things unpredictable and have a penchant for twist endings - another hallmark of the show - this is a series you need to see. The variety is remarkable, the writing clever, and the casts delightful.
