Mrs Brown's Boys - Live

Love/Hate actually premiered on STV in the UK and then repeated on Channel 5.

Indeed, it wouldn't have been the only Irish show to get a regional ITV airing, Fair City and Glenroe have done the rounds (and BBC NI and UTV have I think picked up a few others). However, I was more trying to think of the ones that have got a terrestrial network airing.

For the same reason I didn't count the likes of Moone Boy and Fifty Ways to Kill Your Mammy, and also because these shows fall into the same "Irish written, cast, and set but British commissioned and produced" peg as Father Ted and Mrs Browne, though being on Sky/cable they're less well known.

There's also Graham Linehan's short lived sitcom The Walshes that was again Irish set, but made in Teddington studios. There seems to be quite a few Irish set, but British made sitcoms when you think about it!

I didn't know there was such hostility towards RTE making studio sitcoms. Would it be comparable to how, arguably, people see ITV trying to make studio sitcoms?

I don't think it's hostility, it's just not something they're known for, just like ITV and (traditional) sitcoms. The last decent one I can think of was Loved By You, and that was nearly 20 years ago.

Personally I'd rather see ITV try and fail ( Vicious was... well, they tried) than not bother at all.

Never heard of Loved By You, so it can't have been that much of a success (and I remember Babes In The Wood and Sam's Game!). Barbara seems to be the 00's benchmark used for ITV sitcom. Before that I'd say The Upper Hand and Second Thoughts were up there. Obviously Birds of a Feather is the most recent success (granted, a revival of a BBC programme).

ITV has been far more successful with less conventional comedy/comedy dramas such as Cold Feet & Benidorm.

Hardware was moderately successful in the 00s too.

Anyone remember that sitcom with Frank Skinner (can't remember what it was called now) which had a second series made but ITV never showed it? I think it did turn up on Paramount Comedy a couple of years later though.

Shane, and yes we can consign that to the skip along with Sam's Game.

Worse.

The hostility mainly comes from early 1990s newspaper sitcom, Extra Extra Read All About It, widely derided at the time as one of the worse sitcoms ever made. Disappeared after one season and never repeated. RTE had better success later in the 1990s with lottery winners sitcom Upwardly Mobile, which the critics hated but the public liked well enough for it to run for three years. After that though, I struggle to remember a traditional, studio set sitcom with an audience (or even canned laughter)that RTE have produced. It's not to say that RTE don't do comedy though. They've done quite a bit of panel shows (including probably their biggest comedy success The Panel, which ran for around a decade) sketch and impersonation shows (Bull Island, Mario Rosenstock, Oliver Callinan, and the Republic of Telly - a show that started as an initiation of Harry Hill's TV Burp but turned into a sort of sketch show with elements of its original format remaining), and comedy dramas (Raw started as one, although the comedy got toned down after the first season). But no, they can't seem to do sitcoms right at all.

Their latest attempt has been "Bridget and Eamonn", a spin off of a sketch from Republic of Telly about a married couple in 1980s Ireland, but I'm not sure it's a sitcom in the traditional sense - more like a sketch where the (one) joke is being stretched across six episodes. It's proved popular enough for a second season though.

They have also had other successful comedies/entertainment shows such as The Panel (which you mentioned) The Podge & Rodge Show, Naked Camera (followed by it's spin off Makin' Jake) and Anonymous with Jason Byrne which everyone used to watch when I was at school despite the fact I live in Northern Ireland.

The Panel was excellent especially under Dara O'Briain before he went to the BBC and Mock the Week and then under Colin Murphy and Neil Delamere who are still excellent on the BBC NI Panel Show the Blame Game but for me the Panel lost it when they went they had David McWilliams as host and moved to RTE One and that's when I stopped watching. The Podge & Rodge show was also excellent for the first few series where 2 Irish Puppets which started on The Den moved to a chatshow which was filthy yet funny until RTE messed about with the format turning it from a chat show to a quiz show before changing it back to a chat show mid series but by then the damage was done and was axed but the first few series had massive ratings for RTE nearly getting as much ratings as Ireland's flagship show The Late Late Show