Strange things you never knew about your favourite TV show

Here are some of the weirdest set secrets:

1. During the third season of The Big Bang Theory, producers realised a television show called The Theorists in Belarus was ripping off their hit series. They considered legal action, but it never eventuated because the stars of the copycat show all quit when they realised what had happened.

2. Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm actually saved a man from death row. An episode of the sitcom confirmed the alibi of a California murder suspect after he was seen in crowd footage of an LA Dodgers game. The wrongly accused man had been in jail for five months when the vision was discovered.

3. What does Game of Thrones have in common with the doomed cruise liner, Titanic? Well, the hit show is actually filmed in the same factory in Ireland where the vessel was made.

4. Ed Westwick shot to fame playing Chuck Bass, whose love story with Leighton Meester’s Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl melted hearts everywhere. But he very nearly didn’t even get the part — because producers thought he looked like a serial killer.

5. The actors who play President Garrett Walker and the Secretary of State in House of Cards managed to keep the fact that they’re husband and wife in real life pretty quiet during the show’s early stages. Michael Gill and Jayne Atkinson auditioned for their parts separately, and producers only found out about their marriage after casting them.

6. The Lost pilot was so expensive the Chairman of the US network that made it was fired for giving it the green light. That first episode cost $12 million dollars — and Lloyd Braun’s job.

7. The computers in The Office had real internet connections, so cast members would actually surf the web during filming.

8. Most of the scenes in How I Met Your Mother featuring Ted’s two kids were filmed in the first season to maintain the illusion they stayed the same age. Talk about planning ahead.