BBC Sitcom season.

I don't remember them doing many studio audience ones though.

Incidently one of its most successful sitcoms, Him & Her was essentially The Royle Family set in a bedsit (except for the last series which was more traditional). Mind you I've read a review of Fleabag that called it 'Miranda with anal sex', there's very little truly new and original


It was great but audience expectations changed between the first and second series. A lot of viewers complained that there was audience laughter on it when there wasn't on the first series.... when of course that's not the case

There were complaints about "canned laughter" because people assumed there was no audience due to the closed nature of the set. As a nation we seem to get irked about what we perceive to be fake laughter when in fact the majority of British comedy has a genuine laughter track - albeit sometimes recorded afterwards during screenings. I think Red Dwarf had to deal with canned laughter complaints when it went filmic.

And that wasn't even their own show, it was originally on BBC Two but they ditched it after the first series and so it moved to Choice and then Three

I don't think it helps that putting a film look on a sitcom somehow makes it feel more "fake", if you know what I mean. Might be part of the reason why I've seen a lot of people who think the laughter on Porridge was "canned" as well. A bit like when they insist on filmising live TV shows, which then stops them feeling as if they're live.

Yep, but the odd thing was that people only seemed to notice it on the second series, which was broadcast after The Office and The Royle Family started

I can remember at the time people angrily insisting it was never there on the first series!

While everyone's focusing on the new Goodnight Sweetheart tomorrow, just a reminder that tonight is the first "lost sitcom", Till Death Us Do Part!

I put that down to one moment in the first episode, where the studio audience laughed over the top of a line. That one occasion became "you couldn't even hear the jokes for the laughter!!!"

I guess that's part of a problem if you're showing something to an audience after it's been recorded. If something like that happens when there's an audience there then the actors usually pause until the laughs over, or repeat the line.

Aaaand film effect. Despite quite clearly playing up the fact that it's a studio-based live-audience sitcom.

And the original episode would obviously never have had it...

Typical of 2016 TV producer attitudes though.

Interestingly the League of Gentlemen, which began not long after The Royle Family and before The Office, launched with a studio audience and laughter track, but this was dropped for the third and final series in 2002. By then it did seem like laughter in the background was going out of fashion.