A new immersive theater adaptation of BBC's Inside No 9 is being staged at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.
Premiering on Wednesday, it is a resident program at the studio theater of SGT and the first theater adaptation of the British TV series.
Inside No 9 is a black comedy anthology spanning eight seasons. First aired in 2014, the show was created by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, and consists of 30-minute episodes that each features a self-contained story with elements of comedy and horror, and nearly always a plot twist.
The show has been widely praised by critics. The Guardian's Mark Jones said that Inside No 9 was "never less-than-captivating", and Gareth Lightfoot once wrote in the Evening Gazette Teesside that the show is "hands down the best, freshest thing on TV at the moment".
Pemberton and Shearsmith won the 2014-15 Royal Television Society Programme Awards for Best Comedy Performance for Inside No 9. In 2019, Pemberton won the Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme gong at the BAFTAs.
On Chinese streaming platform Bilibili, the eighth season of the show alone has had more than 20 million views.
Zhao Miao, director of the Chinese theater adaptation, says he "loves the ingenuity of Shearsmith and Pemberton" and admires the high quality of the TV series. He also noted that the stories of Inside No 9 make them "perfect for theater" and that "now is the perfect timing for immersive theater in Shanghai".
