Saturday Night Takeaway 2018

Was it just me that felt that Studio 2 looked tiny when empty?

As for the show itself, Dec did a wonderful job, as non of us are surprised at - it was a different situation for him, but he's still a consummate professional. I felt that the show flowed very well with a range of emotions. I enjoyed the End of The Show Show, it reminded me of Mike & Angelo!

As has been said Stephen Merchant was brilliant as star guest announcer, his quips kept them all on their toes and laughing, something that was needed more this week than ever. I think my favourite was his line to Stephen about him talking over his lines, Dec & Stephen's faces were brilliant.

The magic of TV eh! It looked pretty tiny when the SM:TV and CD:UK sets were in there, but somehow looked like a warehouse on screen. Those shows sure made good use of that space.

No tired audience seating, and also everything is filmed quite close up, same with Live and Kicking and the like, so in the space of the Saturday Night Takeaway set you could probably have 4 different presentation/sketch areas, and you’d never see them all at once.

The CD:UK performance stage was probably only as big as the right hand performance part of the SNT set as well.

Ah. I suppose visiting tv studios has the reverse TARDIS reaction - "it's a lot smaller than on the TV"

Makes me wonder what size the studios at Riverside were, then, seeing as SM:TV and CD:UK had to be in separate studios, and even then Eat My Goal had to go outside.

Well Studio 2 at the London Studio is 7,271 Sq Ft and was the first main studio to open at the complex in 1972. Pretty big. So many shows have used Studio 2, from drama such as Upstairs Downstairs, talk shows such as Graham Norton before he decided to move into Studio 1, sitcoms such as Father Ted and tea time shows like The Paul O'Grady Show. It is a much loved studio, and will be sorely missed by a lot of productions. I suspect Riverside were around the same size as TLS Studio 2.

Studio 2 was marketed as a bare shell studio, with different audience platforms which could be used for varying sizes, this is what made Studio 2 great for so many productions and genres over the last 40 years.

7,271 sq ft in TLS Studio 2 isn't exactly small though. (TC6 at TVC for Live & Kicking/The Saturday Show was 6,440 sq ft) but yes, Wide angle lenses and good set design can make a studio look massive.


Going Live was 2,400 ft² in TC7.

SM:TV & CD:UK were both produced in Studio 2 - one after the other.

I know, I was talking about their time at Riverside.

Apologies to you, I did not realise.

I don't have the figures but speaking from personal experience the SM:TV space was really small at Riverside! They could have done Eat My goal in the CD:UK studio but I guess they thought they'd make use of the terrace too. Riverside was a big letdown after TLS though - a perfectly good studio on its own, but really didn't have the same buzz for a live show like that for me.