The 12 Days of Christine

Critics variously commended the performances of the actors, particularly Smith, the poignancy of the plot, and the impact of the unforeseen ending.

[4] On writing the script, Pemberton and Shearsmith immediately thought of Sheridan Smith as a performer who would be suitable to play Christine.

9, Pemberton and Shearsmith were permitted to build two sets; the first was for "La Couchette", the first episode of the series, and the second was for "The 12 Days of Christine".

[4][8] Smith described the fake flat as "lovely", explaining that it was "a full set; bedroom, bathroom, working taps – everything".

[5] Christine (Smith) arrives home to her flat with Adam (Riley), whom she has just met at a New Year's party.

Thirteen months later, it is Valentine's Day and Christine chats with her flatmate Fung (Liu) at home.

Thirteen months later, it is Father's Day and Adam tends to their son Jack (played variously by Joel Little and Dexter Little) in the night.

Christine hears the Stranger's voice through the baby monitor saying "Come on little man, let's get you out of there" and rushes into Jack's room.

There is another time shift, and, now divorced from Adam, Christine films Jack as he gets ready for his first day of school.

She has been dying as a result of a road collision as emergency services attempt to free her while her memories replay themselves.

There are also a number of allusions to horror films; Fung is referred to as "the grudge", the Stranger's appearance evokes Don't Look Now and the throwing of eggs may be associated with Ghostbusters.

[10] Julie McDowall, who reviewed the episode for The Herald, also considers the viewer "totally immersed in one character's confused and flawed point of view".

[3] Andrew Billen argued that the episode used the link between the "breaches of realism" in ghost stories and the "transgressions" of comedy in order "to make a serious statement about the supernatural".

For him, the episode was a story about "human memory's spasmodic grasp" and Christine's "friable mental condition".

The haunting element of the story, Billen suggests, is indicative of mental illness; specifically, Christine's early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

[12] That Christine is afflicted with the condition means that her life has become a "nightmare version" of blind man's buff.

[12] McDowall noted that, with Christine's growing unhappiness and increasingly dishevelled appearance as the episode progresses, it is easy to see the story as about a mental collapse.

It was awarded five out of five stars by Billen (The Times) and Wilson (Daily Telegraph), who, respectively, called it a "masterpiece" and "a quiet elegy, terse and polished, in many ways perfect".

Nonetheless, he felt that "the episode is a distillation of accurate observation that says more about the hope, messiness and disappointment of life in half an hour than most dramas say over an entire series".

[10] Similarly, Wilson praised the writers for achieving "genuine poignancy" in half an hour,[13] and critics in the Metro said that the episode "packs more drama and suspense into 30 minutes than many a five-part series".

[20] The story's ending was praised, with Dessau saying that "One of the skills of actor/writers Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton is the way they plant seeds and gradually leak out details.

"[14] McDowall expressed a similar thought, saying that the "writers so cleverly threw us off the scent, making the eventual realisation so agonising".

[12] Wilson commended Smith's "arresting performance", saying that "No one does girl-next-door naturalism better – she has the actor's elixir of making you think you know her, just by a smile or an inflection.

"[13] Dessau commended the writers for allowing other actors to play the lead roles, praising the performances of Riley and, especially, Smith.

[20] Ellen E Jones, writing in The Independent, said that the song "was deployed on the soundtrack to devastating effect – we'll be humming it uneasily for another 12 days to come.