³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Ìý

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton - co-creators, writers and performers behind dark comedy classic Psychoville - talk about Series 2...

How did the second series come about? Did you already have an idea what the plot would be after the end of the first series?

Reece: Well we didn’t know if we would get a second series but we had to dare to think that we might. So at the end of the first series we put something in that we thought could work as a springboard for a story in the second series.

Happily we did get the second series and so the thing which infuriated a lot of people at the end of the first series, which was Nurse Kenchington coming back from the dead looking for this mysterious locket, becomes the driving force for the second series.

What can viewers expect from Series Two?

Steve: We knew it would be important to have another overarching mystery for the second series. We have a character called Grace Andrews, played by Imelda Staunton who is desperately trying to track down Nurse Kenchington’s missing locket and she believes that, rightly, one of the former Ravenhill patients has the locket. The mystery is why she wants it and what is she going to use it for?

Can you tell us anything about who may have survived the fateful blast at Ravehill?

Steve: No. If we had our way we wouldn’t want to reveal anything at all before the show airs but we are going to have trailers and pictures, so it is quite tricky.

Reece: There are more characters than you would expect who survive.

Do you ever worry about pushing boundaries and going too far?

Steve: We are aware of it but I don’t think we had many of those discussions on series two. You have to be careful with language, I think very often it is language which gets you into trouble and you know what those words are to avoid.

Can you tell us about some of the new characters in series two and where the inspiration for them came from?

Reece: I play a new character called Jeremy Goode, who is a librarian who becomes very pedantic about a book not being returned to the library, which is a funny situation at the beginning because of how exacting he is about it. The lengths he goes to to get the book back become more and more extreme.

Steve: And then we have the character of Hattie, who is a make up artist who becomes embroiled in a fake wedding to keep her gay friend’s Iranian boyfriend in the country. She seems all very sweetness and light as if she is happy to participate in the wedding but she takes it rather too seriously even though it is a sham wedding. I don’t think she has many redeeming features, I think we forgot to do that with her!

There is a new online experience for fans once again – what can people expect this time round?

Reece: Yes, we’ve done the same if not more websites for the second series in a similar vein to what we did for the first series, which you can discover at bbc.co.uk/psychoville. The second series is very much an investigation so we very much ran with that online.

There is a new web page to go with a character or part of the mystery to unravel each week and there are questions to be answer and along the way you get a lot of content - exclusive videos and other things. For the first week there is a website for FOCCE - the Federation of Clowns and Children’s Entertainers.

Don't miss our blog post revealing the new characters and familiar faces in the new show.

Clicky the link if you missed the Halloween Special.

Swat up on Psychoville Series 1 before the new show begins Thursday 5th May, 10pm on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Two.