In Psychoville Halloween, its writers have allowed their imaginations to run riot, the occasion providing the perfect reason to demonstrate their knowledge and enthusiasm for the horror genre. Taking the form of an Amicus-style portmanteau horror, the hour-long Halloween special introduces four separate, macabre stories all tied together with a single overarching narrative. The two then regale one another with a quartet of spooky stories, each featuring characters familiar from the first series – misanthropic clown Mr Jelly, Lomax, Joy and David and Maureen all make a welcome return. To describe what happens in each tale would spoil the surprises they contain, but I can say there are some remarkably frightening moments in each of them. Mr Jelly’s brush with the supernatural is particularly unnerving, as are the results of Oscar Lomax’s eye operation, which references Japanese and Korean horror in a way that is both funny and occasionally unnerving. Psychoville Halloween’s dialogue is superb throughout, and there are several lines I’ll probably end up quoting endlessly during pub conversations. “They’ve put a rat in me Pringles and cockroaches in me chocolates” is just one of them. There’s also lengthy, bewildering discussion about recycling bins that provides the episode’s biggest belly laugh. Ending on an intriguing note that provides a hint of what we can expect from the next season, Psychoville Halloween works brilliantly as both a stand-alone special and a bridge between the first series and the second, while at the same time providing an ideal primer for anyone foolish enough to have missed the show on its original run.
