Studio sitcoms - where are they?

A topic/question I know will have been brought-up time and time again - but as of 2022, what are the current (or most recent) sitcoms of any channel here in the UK, filmed in front of a live audience?

I MISS these comedies. I know Mrs Brown's Boys is still going and it is not to my taste, but at least they're still going.

Not Going Out is probably the last bastion of decent studio sitcoms out there, and that's been around for 15 years or so now.

I hope studio recordings make a comeback over the next 10 years or so.

Not sure there are any.
Studio-based comedy now seems to be of the panel show type format.
So, there is studio, live-audience comedy - but it's not scripted.
Easy to knock out and (God knows why) very popular.

Kate and Koji is the most recent one I can think of.

Quote: Tommy Griff @ 19th July 2022, 3:41 PM

A topic/question I know will have been brought-up time and time again - but as of 2022, what are the current (or most recent) sitcoms of any channel here in the UK, filmed in front of a live audience?

I MISS these comedies. I know Mrs Brown's Boys is still going and it is not to my taste, but at least they're still going.

Not Going Out is probably the last bastion of decent studio sitcoms out there, and that's been around for 15 years or so now.

I hope studio recordings make a comeback over the next 10 years or so.

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This. Breaks my heart. Almost everything else is so tedious, unfriendly and one-note.

Quote: Lazzard @ 19th July 2022, 3:53 PM

Not sure there are any.
Studio-based comedy now seems to be of the panel show type format.
So, there is studio, live-audience comedy - but it's not scripted.
Easy to knock out and (God knows why) very popular.

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They provide easy escapism. They kind we used to get when studio sitcoms were knocked out at a much more rapid pace. They don't attract anything like the same viewership or following though.

Quote: Aaron @ 22nd July 2022, 10:51 AM

This. Breaks my heart. Almost everything else is so tedious, unfriendly and one-note.

They provide easy escapism. They kind we used to get when studio sitcoms were knocked out at a much more rapid pace. They don't attract anything like the same viewership or following though.

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I suppose my point is that in the past, shows like this would be very much under the 'Light Entertainment/Family Show' banner.
There's no way Blankety-Bank would have been listed as a comedy.
I feel that these days they are very much counted as comedy output, taking up the space - both physically and mentally - of the studio sitcoms.
As I said, I don't give them the time of day.

Quote: Lazzard @ 22nd July 2022, 11:50 AM

I suppose my point is that in the past, shows like this would be very much under the 'Light Entertainment/Family Show' banner.
There's no way Blankety-Bank would have been listed as a comedy.
I feel that these days they are very much counted as comedy output, taking up the space - both physically and mentally - of the studio sitcoms.
As I said, I don't give them the time of day.

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Yes, very much agreed.

Although, as someone who regularly reads back through old Radio Times and TV Times issues and listings data, many such formats were described as "comedy"; the difference being of course, they weren't seemingly at the expense of scripted comedy in the schedules. Now moreso than then, however, they come from different departments, Comedy (scripted stuff) being a completely separate department within the BBC, for example, from Entertainment, which commissions shows like Blankety Blank, HIGNFY and Live At The Apollo - some of which are definitively counted as part of wider comedy programming.

(That is opposed to the old days of a single Light Entertainment department making all of it, of course.)

In the studio, usually.

I just saw a clip of Coupling, which I'm sure was a studio based sitcom, and I liked it but I just hated the "filmic" feel of it. Obviously trying to copy Friends, which I've always hated too.

I think Moffatt would have preferred to film the whole thing - hence the filmic 'look'.
He hated people having to wait for laughs - preferring a more naturalistic feel.

Quote: Lazzard @ 22nd July 2022, 11:25 PM

I think Moffatt would have preferred to film the whole thing - hence the filmic 'look'.
He hated people having to wait for laughs - preferring a more naturalistic feel.

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Definitely not true, if his interview with us last year is anything to go by. See the last question.

https://www.comedy.co.uk/pro/inside_track/steven-moffat-on-comedy-writing/

Fair enough - but I would say the last paragraph implies he's changed his mind - perhaps that's what I was thinking of.

"One night, I think it was for Nightlines in Series 4, we actually did the whole show looking the way it should, in costume and properly lit before the audience came in. I thought 'actually that kind of works, that's better'. It was the first time I saw what Coupling would have been in an alternate universe where you don't need an audience. You decide for yourself where the laughs are. But I am very pleased with Coupling."

Quote: Sitcomfan64 @ 19th July 2022, 8:28 PM

Kate and Koji is the most recent one I can think of.

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And this one is a good example of why they've become an endangered species. To start with it's very static, not every sitcom has to be a SMDAE but ideally you'd like some action and movement in them. Fawlty Towers hardly got out of the hotel but the movement within it was breathtaking. It's all in the script, if it's inspired, the sitcom will be, if it's flat and banal as is K&K's, the sitcom will be, whoever stars in it.

There have always been flat sitcoms and hit and miss studio sitcoms together with good funny ones, but it's the good ones you remember. The trouble now is there are so very few made that the funny ones aren't hiding the bland ones, and that is giving them a bad reputation with the younger viewing public who weren't around in the golden age of sitcom. They'd rather watch stand ups repeating their shite on cheaper to make panel shows where there are more laughs, as forced as some of them are.

This sitcom also lost its lead actor and is continuing the series with another pretending to be same character, a problem you won't get with "unscripted" panel shows, and it's hardly going to endear studio sitcom to this younger generation of viewers the BBC in particular are obsessed with reaching. Why they are is a mystery, as very few of them actually have a TV licence. The majority who have, and are saying we want more studio sitcoms to watch instead of dramadies and panel shows, are totally ignored because we are not young and cool, even though we fund them. Time for the Beeb to do one.

Before people start screaming at me this is not a judgment, just an observation, but studio audience sitcoms feel old fashioned and very much a throwback tto a bygone age. For better or worse things have moved on. I'm sure if there was a market for them we'd see more, but in the streaming Til Tock You Tube age it doesn't seem likel too many people want them.

Quote: chipolata @ 23rd July 2022, 10:36 AM

Before people start screaming at me this is not a judgment, just an observation, but studio audience sitcoms feel old fashioned and very much a throwback tto a bygone age. For better or worse things have moved on. I'm sure if there was a market for them we'd see more, but in the streaming Til Tock You Tube age it doesn't seem likel too many people want them.

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They're probably(Possibly) more expensive to produce.

They do still exist, but you can count them on one hand - Not Going Out, Mrs. Browns Boys, Red Dwarf, Kate & Koji, and Upstart Crow.

I wonder if "The Office" was the point where critics decided that non-studio sitcoms were a much better way of doing things and started criticizing studio sitcoms on sight for being dated. Ricky's own mocking of the format on "Extras" probably doesn't help to be honest.

It's a crying shame, especially since some of my favorite sitcoms are studio based. It's why it grinds my gears when I see opinion pieces on how unsophisticated they are.