A Quiet Night In

"A Quiet Night In"
Inside No. 9 episode
"A Quiet Night In" poster, designed by Matt Owen[1]
Episode no.	Series 1 Episode 2
Directed by	David Kerr
Written by	Steve Pemberton Reece Shearsmith
Featured music	Christian Henson
Original air date	12 February 2014 (2014-02-12)
Running time	30 minutes
Guest appearances
Denis Lawson as Gerald Joyce Veheary as Kim Oona Chaplin as Sabrina Kayvan Novak as Paul
Episode chronology
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"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's second series, a sentiment echoed by some television critics.