Empty Orchestra start singing. The music was pumped up and we had a mini party, with mad dancing – that was a memorable scene to film." The filming introduced a number of technical challenges, with the producer Adam Tandy explaining that the simultaneous singing and conversing made production particularly difficult: "To record it all 'clean' and have options in the edit, that was technically hard on everybody." Typically, karaoke scenes in television will see characters sing only the opening lines, but because of the format of "Inside No. 9", the characters in "Empty Orchestra" sing the whole song. Each character sang a
Empty Orchestra overall, emphasising that "Empty Orchestra" was still commendable. The more upbeat story was "a refreshingly restrained change of pace for the show" for Butler, and possessed its "own charm" for Owen. Butler wrote that "some will have no doubt been disappointed" by the lack of a bloody climax, but that "variety in tone and story is what helps make "Inside No. 9" work so well. You can't begrudge it a happy, straightforward ending every now and then." The episode's plot and production were praised. For Mellor, "In barely any time at all, we'd been told a complete story that was