British sitcom

A British sitcom (sometimes called a Britcom) is a situational comedy programme produced for British television. British sitcoms have predominantly been recorded on studio sets, while some include an element of location filming. Live audiences and multi-cameras were first used in the US by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball for their American show I Love Lucy in 1951 and the system was adopted in the UK. Several are made almost entirely on location (for example, Last of the Summer Wine) and shown to a studio audience prior to final post-production to record genuine laughter. In contrast to the American team writing system, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson's huge successes were of such quality that they became the paradigm for British sitcom writing. By the time the television set had become a common part of home furnishing, sitcoms were significant expressions of everyday life and were often a window on the times of enormous social changes in the British class system and its conflicts and prejudices. The period from 1970 to 1979 in particular is often considered the 'Golden Age' of British sitcom, with Fawlty Towers (1975 and 1979) being "the British sitcom by which all other British sitcoms must be judged". A subset of British comedy consciously avoids traditional situation comedy themes, storylines, and home settings to focus on more unusual topics or narrative methods. Blackadder (1983–1989) and Yes Minister (1980–1988, 2013) moved what is often a domestic or workplace genre into the corridors of power. A later development was the mockumentary genre exemplified by series such as The Office (2001–2003). The Office heralded the modern trend of the single-camera sitcom dispensing with live audiences. Since the turn of the century, many sitcoms had been filmed on a single-camera set-up or entirely on location, with no studio screening or laugh...