BBC Sitcom season.

Porridge sounded like it was put on at a screening. The sets were too large for a studio with audience.

In the original, wasn't it only the cells that were in the studio with the live audience, the remainder being shot on location on 16mm film?

I'm Alan Partridge WAS recorded in the presence of a live audience, just in a closed set so the audience watched the live footage on screens.

Incidentally, parts of the Fawlty Towers set were also out of view from the audience (all of upstairs and the kitchen), and John Cleese has said it was often hard to hear the audience laughter as the technology to pipe it in wasn't around.

The living room in One Foot In The Grave had a fourth wall that could be rolled in, even during a scene, allowing Victor to walk into the kitchen and leave the door open.



The League of Gentlemen started as a theatre show though, so audience laughter suited it. It's only when the style of show changed for series 3 that they took it away.

It wasn't there on the 2000 Christmas special either. But again, that was in a vastly different style to series 1 &2 as well.

Well, cells and other small sets, like offices, the doctor's surgery, the local hospital, or the toilets.

Might be easier to say that outdoor stuff and anything immediately outside the cells was shot on 16mm (I think the main prison interior set was built inside in a large disused water tank), and almost everything else was on video.

Watched this tonight and wished it had of stayed lost, nothing wrong with the acting as such but think it was of it's time and didn't translate well to 2016. I hope Hancock's Half Hour and Steptoe & Son are better.

An interesting aside is that last night's Till Death Us Do Part had the "Randy Scouse Git" line, which means the original version of the episode must be the one that Mickey Dolenz saw and wrote a Monkees song with that title!

Just because it might not raise the laughs it might have done back in the day, doesn't mean it isn't worth preserving/performing. Moreso, perhaps, because it is so much of its day, in a way that Hancock and Steptoe aren't (bar the occasional joke about powercuts or petrol rationing). It's a reflection of a very particular time and set of attitudes.

That said, one man's angry quest for fish and chips wasn't quite what I was expecting from TDUDP. Was it one of the "odd" episodes?

Did Goodnight Sweetheart always look so cheap? Those opening titles were horrible.

No film effect on it at least thankfully!

And I'm guessing if it gets commissioned for a full series then part of the plot will be keeping the time travelling from Gary's daughter.

Quite impressed with it overall hope it gets a full series!

Funnily enough earlier today when I was setting up my new satellite box for my motirised dish, I came across Forces TV as they were running a trailer for their repeats, and they referred to it as the "original series"- obviously taking this new episode into account!

Just started watching Young Hyacinth, the actress really has the mannerisms and voice down well!

It was a pastiche of 1960s style which was quite brash and tacky.

I thought it was brilliant, and having watched the last series this week on DVD, it really felt like it hadn't dropped a beat between the final episode and this one. It's getting high praise on Twitter too.

I guess, as many people have said, it has the original writers and cast on board, and is a direct continuation, so that's something it has going for it that the other three don't have.