Inspired by the marriage of the medium and genre to turn its listeners into active crime-solvers, she decided to create a television series along these lines.

[3] The creative team pitched the show to Jo Street, Commissioning Editor of BBC Daytime, by having her play a game the two had written for a pilot.

Street, a crime lover with a dog named Columbo, would successfully solve the murder and enjoy playing the game.

She thought the show struck the right balance between drama and quiz, and had faith in the murder mystery crafting ability of the development team.

Their role is to meticulously scatter the complete picture of means, motive, and opportunity throughout the story in verbal (e.g. testimonial), physical, forensic, audio, visual, written, and other clues.

[3] While the format had been done in the past, Brooks felt that gameshow murder mysteries live on due to being entertaining and intriguing, putting viewers into a heightened emotional state of reevaluation, including quizzes and games, and allowing viewers to choose the level of activeness with which to digest the show – either sitting back and enjoying a passive TV drama to be surprised at the end or using problem-solving skills to be one step ahead of the detectives.

[9] Peake recalled that during research he and Bodycombe did for the episode "Derby Day Death", he got "accidentally soaked in the office kitchen".

[11] The episode "Finders Keepers" featured a homage to the British comedy series Detectorists by naming its suspects after characters from that show.

[12] Peake notes that there are some clues that are written into a story that are never mentioned or revealed in the episode either by the confession scene, the contestants, or the host.

[14] DI Knight, a "silver-haired deadpan alpha male with a penchant for coffee and dad jokes that rarely land with his colleagues", was conceived by Brooks with the specific character trait of being a person her mum would have a crush on.

Finally, Scene Of Crime Officer Simmons was written specifically to be a strong intelligent female character, who is personable and has a gallows sense of humour.

[3] Tiger Aspect chose to use East Lothian as the filming location of the fictional Mortcliff; areas featured include Tranent, Longniddry, Cockenzie/Port Seton, North Berwick, Inveresk, and Gullane.

[20] Endemol Shine UK, the production company that owns the Tiger Aspect label,[21] has hopes for more international sales than they've had with the gameshow Pointless.

[17] Each episode features a story set in the fictional Scottish village of Mortcliff (taken from "mort" meaning death and "cliff" as in cliffhanger).

The in-universe investigations are led by detectives DI Knight and DC Slater, and forensic expert Officer Simmons.

The site continued by arguing that while the "pleasingly old fashioned" show (due to its "lovely Scottish accents and scenery, goofy humour, and breezy, gossipy chat") does contain some "hilariously petty reasons to kill", it is the most successful attempt at the playalong murder mystery format.

[26] The Times thought that the show was a "lethally mild" piece of afternoon entertainment, jokingly offering favourable alternatives based on the viewers' tastes: better locations with A Place in the Sun, more "vicious crimes" with Come Dine with Me, and more "females being harassed or tortured" with Loose Women.