"A Quiet Night In" is the second episode of the British dark comedy television anthology series Inside No. 9. It first aired on 12 February 2014 on BBC Two. Written by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, it stars the writers as a pair of hapless burglars attempting to break into the large, modernist house of a couple—played by Denis Lawson and Oona Chaplin—to steal a painting. Once the burglars make it into the house, they encounter obstacle after obstacle, while the lovers, unaware of the burglars' presence, argue. The episode progresses almost entirely without dialogue, relying instead on physical comedy and slapstick, though more sinister elements are present in the plot. In addition to Pemberton, Shearsmith, Lawson and Chaplin, "A Quiet Night In" also starred Joyce Veheary and Kayvan Novak.
Shearsmith and Pemberton had originally considered including a dialogue-free segment in their television series Psychoville, but ultimately did not; they found the format of Inside No. 9 appropriate for revisiting the idea. Both journalists and those involved with the episode's production commented on the casting of Chaplin, a grandchild of the silent film star Charlie Chaplin, in an almost entirely dialogue-free episode, though her casting was not a deliberate homage. Critics generally responded positively to the episode, and a particularly laudatory review by David Chater was published in The Times, prompting a complaint from a reader who found the episode more traumatic than comedic. On its first airing, "A Quiet Night In" was watched by 940,000 viewers (4.8% of the market).
"A Quiet Night In" was submitted to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts for the 2015 awards, but it was not nominated. Pemberton and Shearsmith have said that they have no plans to do further silent episodes, but have compared "A Quiet Night In" to the highly-experimental "Cold Comfort" from Inside No. 9 second series, a sentiment echoed by some television critics.
Production
Writers Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, who had previously co-written and starred in The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville, took inspiration for Inside No. 9 from "David and Maureen", episode 4 of the first series of Psychoville, which was in turn inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. "David and Maureen" took place entirely in a single room, and was filmed in only two shots. At the same time, the concept of Inside No. 9 was a "reaction" to Psychoville, with Shearsmith saying that "we'd been so involved with labyrinthine over-arcing, we thought it would be nice to do six different stories with a complete new house of people each week. That's appealing, because as a viewer you might not like this story, but you've got a different one next week." As an anthology series with horror themes, Inside No. 9 also pays homage to Tales of the Unexpected, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
The format of Inside No. 9 allowed Pemberton and Shearsmith to explore ideas which are less practical for other approaches to storytelling, such as the possibility of a script with little dialogue. Prior to writing "A Quiet Night In", Shearsmith had spoken with directors, including Ben Wheatley, about the possibility of producing television without speech. The directors had expressed doubts, Shearsmith explained, because the success of dialogue-free television comes down entirely to the visuals and filming. "A Quiet Night In" was inspired by an idea Shearsmith and Pemberton had discussed for Psychoville. The writers had considered omitting dialogue from a ten-minute section in an episode, or even from the whole episode. Pemberton explained that this was not possible as there were "too many good jokes" which they wanted to fit into the sequence. This episode, like "A Quiet Night In", dealt with a break-in.
Inside No. 9, for Pemberton, offered the "perfect vehicle" for revisiting the possibility of dialogue-free television. Shearsmith said that, at the start of the writing process, the pair did not have the intention of scripting the entire episode without dialogue, and that it would be "great" to have ten minutes without it. However, Pemberton said it was easier to write once they had entered the correct "mindset". Once half an episode had been written, Pemberton said, the pair thought "we've just got to keep going". The only dialogue in the episode is right at the end; "what a great thing to get to the end and just have one line of dialogue", Pemberton suggested, comparing the concept to that of the Mel Brooks film Silent Movie.