The creators of Inside No 9 have revealed that they considered decapitating the sitcom character Mrs Brown in their groundbreaking live episode Dead Line.

In their new podcast series in the run-up to their new BBC Two series starting on May 10, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton discuss classic episodes and answer fan questions. In the first podcast they discuss A Quiet Night In – the 2014 silent episode that was the second one to air.

One fan asked about it being chosen as the episode that the BBC cuts to when there are (fake) technical issues during the live broadcast of Dead Line in 2018.

Steve Pemberton explained that the silent episode in which they play wordless burglars was "a gift" because the swanky house it was set in had a lot of glass windows which were useful for ghostly sightings that fitted in with the chillng Dead Line storyline where people are brutally killed off.

Pemberton said of the decision to choose A Quiet Night In as the programme to replace the live broadcast: "We didn't consider a different episode. The only thing was we considered was a different programme being repeated. And at one point we said 'wouldn't it be great if they said "now here's a repeat of Mrs Brown's Boys," and we would have filmed – in conjunction with Mrs Brown's Boys – a fake opening to a Mrs Brown's Boys episode – where the ghost would've come in and cut Mrs Brown's head off."

Sadly in the end they decided that maybe they wouldn't be allowed to do that, so they went with using A Quiet Night In instead. And in the process created a classic, unforgettable TV event. Although Mrs Brown being decapitated would have also been pretty eventful.

Shearsmith talked more about the kind of attention to details that goes into making each episode in the podcast. They even considered shooting some extra Quiet Night In footage for Dead Line that would have looked like it was the earlier Quiet Night In episode. but they abandoned that as being too difficult. 

The funny thing is that, as Shearsmith explained, the back up episode if Dead Line had had genuine technical problems was always going to be A Quiet Night In... 

The new series of Inside No 9 starts on BBC Two on Monday, May 10 at 9.30pm. 

Watch A Quiet Night In here.

Listen to the new podcast about classic episodes here.