Old Spoofs of TV Series - why was the name often changed?

Where do you get tickets to watch these of BBC shows?

Don't know. Email audience services and ask them.

I've watched lots of shows being taped over the years (at Queen Margaret Drive - yet to visit PQ), and nearly all had sections of pre-recorded material played back to us.

Given the way studios are laid out, you sometimes can't see the sets directly, or they're blocked by apparatus, so there's plenty of monitors to watch and plenty of suspended mics to record reactions.

So in some cases there's not a great deal of difference between an entirely "live" performance or one which has been shot in advance - except of course the performers cannot re-time or alter their delivery in accordance with our reaction in the latter example.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/tickets/
http://www.sroaudiences.com/
http://www.applausestore.com/home.php

Yes, with sitcoms there are a number of things that will got shown to an audience on screens: anything complex (either technically or in terms of performance or props), scenes that have a reveal or an element of surprise and of course external scenes.

On sketch shows - the likes of Little Britain, Mitchell and Webb or Armstrong and Miller they can only get 2 or 3 sets maximum in the studio so will only perform a few sketches live in front of the audience. The pre-recorded sketches are packaged up into 10-15 minute sequences and shown to the audience during the costume changes.

Everything is filmed out of order though, obviously if there's a repeating character they might do all their sketches on one night while his house set is up. Also if there's a running joke that doesn't make sense without the set up from episode 1, all the audiences might get shown that.

There is another important by-product of this process - sketches get chosen for the final series according to how they go down with the audience, if no-one laughs it will get cut. They'll normally edit them together so the strongest sketches go in episodes 1 and 6, the second best in ep 2 etc. Some sketches might not get a laugh on one night but will on another so they'll obviously broadcast that one

A good instance of this is the Dad's Army episode Everybody's Trucking (series 7 episode 1) which, apart from the first scene in the church hall yard, was shot mainly on location as the plot revolved around the platoon using Jones's van to signpost the route for a military exercise and included a running gag involving vehicles getting stuck in mud - obviously something that couldn't be done in a studio.

Thanks for your reply - I didn't realise the BBC comedy laugh tracks were always something from a real audience. I knew, as had been pointed out - that Last of the Summer Wine was played to an audience after filming, but I was always unsure about other comedies. Sorry about my mention of "canned laughter" - I just wasn't aware that all BBC comedy laugh tracks were always real. I can imagine laugh tracks on ITV comedies would have also been real, then?

No need to apologise - I didn't know this until I was told!

I may be wrong, but I think you're right that ITV have always followed the same model as the BBC for sitcoms and other comedy. Canned laughter is really much more common in the States - hence premium productions appending that "filmed before a live studio audience" statement in shows of the 70s and 80s.

A notable exception being M*A*S*H*, which added canned laughter at some point in its history - not at the beginning, but I think in a later release sold for tape or worldwide distribution.

Wasn't there 2 versions of MASH at one point?

The version the Beeb had, minus laughter, except on one occasion by accident, & the version presumbly shown in the US & now shown on the Comedy Central channel.

Does the Beeb version still exist?

I got told something interesting about M*A*S*H* When the BBC first brought the tapes the machine played up thus it was not able to play Canned laughter.

is that one true?

There were, and are, two versions.

Time Warner (I think) bought the rights for distribution, and they had the canned laughter version. Completely from memory I think it took until those rights expired before a non-laugh track version could be re-released, which my dad now enjoys on a mighty box-set.

I guess they might be different prices or the channels that show them believe one to suit their audience more than the other.

This is probably all on Wiki though, so keep in mind I may be waffling pish.

Yes, the ITV laugh tracks were mostly real, although canned laughter was used for the first edition of Spitting Image in 1984. The show's makers weren't too happy about this and insisted that all future episodes were laughless, though a few early nineties episodes were performed live in front of an audience and therefore had a laugh track.

A few sitcoms such as the two Adrian Mole Thames series were aired without a laugh track and perhaps the most interesting departure from this format was Kenny Everett's ITV series where the laughter heard on the aired programmes was that of the studio crew.

The case of LOTSW is an interesting one, it was originally shot in the usual sitcom way (interior scenes in the studio in front of an audience, exterior scenes played in on monitors) but from 1992 onwards all episodes were recorded on film and the interior scenes recorded in the studio without an audience before the finished programmes were played back to preview audiences to provide the laugh track.

Wiki re M*A*S*H*