Watch: How dock10 delivered surprise Inside No.9 in a virtual studio

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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.

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Behind The Scenes


“If you were filming a quiz show in a traditional multicamera studio, you’d run it as live from beginning to end to keep the momentum going, and then go back in for some pick up shots,” continued Davies.

“Because this was virtual, and there was very little in the studio, we were able to do lots of different passes. It was almost a bit like a hybrid between a multicamera and a single camera set up.”

In spite of all this, she admitted that she did have worries about producing a comedy within a virtual environment:

“I was concerned that, although this looks like a quiz show, it isn’t – it’s a narrative comedy. And I’ve always thought that narrative comedy can’t be done virtually. I’d thought that actors need to be able to interact with other actors in a physical set. For some actors, their character doesn’t come alive until they are actually standing on a set in their costume.”

“Instead, the reality was ‘quite freeing’, she says. ‘My advice would be, don’t be afraid of it – just run with it.’”



dock10 said it did most of the work on the set during the pre-production stage, with producer Kim Crowther and production designer Paul Rowan visiting dock10 for a demo, followed by regular meetings to adapt the quiz show prototype.

During filming, they covered up the windows on the gallery to keep the episode secret, including referring to the show with a codename.

“If the secret is kept, the fans will love it because it will throw them a curve ball – and then there may be pressure on us to make the ghost episode Hold on Tight too!” said Davies.

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