The team behind Inside No.9 have revealed the months of planning that went into the production of the surprise episode, which aired last night.
Fans of the Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton dark comedy are used to a twist, but they took it a step further on Thursday.
Viewers believed they were going to watch an episode called Hold on Tight, which was due to be set on a bus.
However, a “technical difficulty” meant that instead of the advertised programme, there’d be a new quiz show pilot, hosted by Lee Mack. This actually turned out to be a deeply disguised Inside No.9 episode.
To make it happen, the production team had to come up with the “ghost” Hold on Tight programme, with EPGs, listing magazines and even a poster to say it was going to happen.
In addition, they had to find a way to build a quiz show set, which are usually prohibitively expensive for a one-off – this is why they opted to use a virtual studio at dock10.
“So dock10 said they had a virtual prototype for a quiz show that we could look at and adapt for our own needs. And that is what did. We adapted their virtual quiz show set,” explained Eirwen Davies, Production Executive for Comedy and at Inside No. 9 Producer.
“If I looked at the studio, there was literally nothing there. Then I’d look at the comped in shots [on the monitor] with the entire set in it. It blew my mind!”
The show was directed by Barbara Wiltshire, who was also behind the acclaimed Halloween Inside No. 9 episode, which also tricked viewers into thinking it had been cancelled because of technical difficulties.
It was shot over 2 days at MediaCity, with studio set comped in real-time during production.
