Comedy Central

There is one episode of Dad's Army that's nearly all on film (I think there's only a single short videotaped scene in there that was shot during the session for another episode), I think that was due to some sort of strike stopping them using the studio- the same thing that led to Spearhead From Space in Doctor Who being entirely on film.

Strange thing was it made that episode of DW look pretty decent compared to the rest.

Not the only show that did it- series 2 of In With The Flynns did it too (Series 1 was entirely film look, and I think done without an audience). Though the irritating practice of sticking a film look on inserts, even when the live/studio portions don't have it seems to be widespread now anyway.

Depends if you mean BBC or ITV- because there's plenty of ITV sitcoms from the 70s and 80s with videotaped locations (especially Thames ones). On The Buses gets repeated enough on ITV3, and Forces TV have shown Get Some In recently- both have video locations (though there is film work in both shows too).

When it comes to BBC, the earliest example I can think of is The Young Ones back in 1982- though that was technically classed as "light entertainment" which may be an explanation of why it had VT location work when all other BBC sitcoms of the era used film.

When it comes to other BBC sitcoms the earliest I can think of is Red Dwarf in 1988, but there might be other more obscure examples. Though there is a VT location scene in a 1985 episode of Only Fools- but that's one show that otherwise kept using film on location even in the 90s and 00s. The latest "new" sitcom I've seen which used film on location was As Time Goes By in 1991 (there are sitcoms using film later than that, but they all began before 1991)- but they went video from series 2 onwards. I think 1991 was the last year it was really common, as you also had Brush Strokes, Bread and May To December using film that year (the latter went video in 1992).

Other examples of sitcoms using film in the 90s are Only Fools, One Foot In The Grave and Waiting For God (the latter's strange as the last scene in most episodes included a location shot- which was done on video even though all the others in the episode were on film). And there's Ab Fab which seemed to rather randomly have filmed location scenes thrown in- though most were on video.

I mentioned Last Of The Summer Wine earlier- in fact the final series done in front of an audience in 1991 was all video, which actually threw me the first time I saw it. It went all film the following series in 1992.

You say that, but come to think of it, The Young Ones used videotape for all location shoots except for the last ever scene where they steal a bus. I wonder why that is.

Maybe they couldn't get the video cameras and VT machines of the era on the bus easily? They were bulky.

Not that strange that it would look decent, and it's also why Spearhead from Space is the only classic Doctor Who story to get a blu-ray release - because it's the only one that could be re-scanned at full 1080p from start to finish.

That was Jon Pertwee's first story. In a bit of a reversal Tom Baker's first story, Robot , was fully video, with plenty of location shooting. So were the second (entirely studio bound) and third (entirely outdoors on location), but after that it was back to film-outside-video-inside until Sylvestor McCoy's run (with the exception of The Stones of Blood in Baker's fifth season, which was shot entirely on video as a directorial decision).

The only other mildly notable one I can think of was Face of Evil , which had film and video studio shots from two different studios both serving as the same in-story location, which was odd.

We really have digressed a bit, though...

report and split ha ha

Wasn't Trial Of a Time Lord on video too?

I'm sure there were some more video location stories in the interim too.

I think you're right about Trial - I've not watched it much, for some reason...

Snakedance had one studio scene deliberately shot on film to add to its other-worldliness, but I don't think any other stories (before Trial ) had on-location video shoots.

back on topic Impractical Jokers actually have three idents. I take it there all from the US?

Scrap that, its four idents. for that programme.