You need that laugh constantly for it to make sense.’ To have that to absolute silence would be weird. So without the laugh, it just sounds odd, because all the characters are quite often knowingly telling a gag. ‘I’m the first say we're not a realistic sitcom, the language is not realistic. ‘That’s the joy of it! We’re filming a live theatrical event… I like the idea that you’re filming something that's happening on that night. ‘When some critics say and they often do, "do we still need to hear people laughing in the background?" I always think, "how do they cope when they're watching a play?" Are they constantly going "shush, stop laughing at this comedy, I’m trying to watch this.’ The most common criticisms of studio sitcoms are that they are dated, and that hearing the laughs of the audience is distracting – neither of which holds much water with Mack. So someone comes in and goes, "Why don't we just call the cooker in the fridge? And the fridge is working."’ ‘So I just think they just said, "Let’s call it comedy-drama instead." To me, it's a bit like, if you can't get your cooker to work and your fridge is fine. People wanted to get it right and it wasn't quite working. That was the that was the impression by the industry and by critics. ‘For whatever reason, British studio sitcoms, in comparison to the American ones, were failing. If they made it now they would probably say it was a sitcom, when actually, it was very much a comedy-drama. ![]() That changed around 2000 with The Office and the Royle Family… ![]() Anything that wasn't in the studio was called comedy-drama. ‘When I was growing up, all comedy was studio sitcom. ‘Genuinely, the night before we made the pilot there was a documentary on ITV called The Sitcom Is Dead, all about how the studio sitcom is now in the past and will never happen again. ![]() Mack admits Not Going Out was never in fashion, starting soon after shows like The Office reinvented the sitcom genre with more realism and no studio audience. ‘But I'm also very lucky that it's very unfashionable, because no younger, up-and-coming comic is trying to take my place…’ But the way we do it is uniquely British, so I like the idea of trying to keep that going. ‘It's a very unique thing, the studio sitcom and I think it's worth protecting, it's important to keep it going,’ he said. He says that despite a critical snobbishness to the genre, it holds a unique – and popular – place in British culture worth saving. Lee Mack has launched a passionate defence of the traditional studio sitcom as his show Not Going Out celebrates its 100th episode.
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