This Time with Alan Partridge

The Linton Travel Tavern set was impressive, as were the sets for the caravan and the petrol station in series two.

Couldn't agree more. The majority would have thought it was in fact a motel on a road just outside Norwich!

Although the painted backdrop of the car park is a bit iffy if you look closely enough.

Thankfully no HD or supersized TV screens in 1997!

Another example from episode one, when Alan is viewing a house:

This is a set:


The rest of the viewing is on location:

Seriously? That first image is a studio set? Wow, I am seriously surprised, I honestly thought that entire thing was location in a house somewhere (not necessarily anywhere near Norwich, I mean Fawlty Towers was set in Torquay but none of it was filmed there).

Talking of iffy backgrounds the "outside" of Fawlty Towers that you see from inside the hotel is so obviously fake (and it doesn't match the external shots either) but I dare say in 1970s domestic home TVs you probably wouldn't have noticed the fake backdrop, whereas now with bigger screens and upscaled DVDs it's far more obvious than it was.

The outdoor backdrop on One Foot In The Grave is very ropey. You can often see the point at which it meets the floor and in at least one scene you can clearly see a studio light.

Actually on the subject of One Foot In The Grave, they also used an elaborate set which had four walls. The living room faced the audience, but if a scene was taking place in the kitchen, the audience would be in the background so they'd roll a fourth wall into place - sometimes mid take.

In this image the audience is behind the wall you can see through the doorway.

No, it's 'equidistant between Norwich and London' that's the genius of its location

Very interesting thread this has become.

So Alan Partridge was a four wall set and then the likes of Mrs Brown's Boys comes along and is blatantly obviously done using a "normal" three wall arrangement (though its natural to presume that other productions used three wall sets and some used four).

I'm going to presume that 2point4Children was four wall as well since it was on air at the same time as One Foot? Heck I suppose even The Thin Blue Line was probably four wall as well?

Good to see this is paired with another new comedy, Warren with Martin Clunes, rather than Mrs Brown repeats or Would I Lie to You, though you'd think they'd lead the hour with the established character.

I don't think so, you don't usually see the fourth wall on 2Point4 Children.

Reminds me of how I'm currently watching through the Blu-rays of the original Twilight zone and how ropey loads of stuff in them looks in HD on a big modern TV, which presumably would have looked fine in the 60s at NTSC resolution on small TVs. Which is also frequently pointed out in the episode commentaries.

Also the six episodes that were originally shot on video still keep the original 1960 telecine transfers of the filmed portions like the opening titles, sponsor ads and the CBS logo at the end (even though they could have spliced in HD versions from elsewhere), and you can see how poor the picture quality is on them (the videotaped material is sharp, so it's clearly the limitations of the 1960 telecine equipment, rather than degraded videotape), which shows the picture quality on even the 35mm shot episodes at the time still would have been indistinct, even if you could travel back to 1960 with a modern flat screen TV.