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Comedy Playhouse

Comedy Playhouse
Comedy Playhouse.jpg
Titlecard for the 1961/62 series episode "The Offer". This episode was the pilot for Steptoe and Son.
Starring Various
Country of origin United Kingdom
No. of episodes 121 (as of 29 April 2014)
Production
Running time Usually 25 minutes, 30 minutes or 35 minutes
Release
Original network BBC One
Picture format 405-line Black-and-white (1961–67)
625-line Black-and-white (1968–69)
625-line PAL (1970–75)
1080i HDTV (2014–)
Audio format Monaural (1961–75)
Surround sound 5.1 (2014–)
Original release Original Series
15 December 1961 - 9 July 1975 – Revived Series
29 April 2014 - present

Comedy Playhouse is a long-running British anthology series of one-off unrelated sitcoms that aired for 120 episodes from 1961 to 1975. Many episodes later graduated to their own series, including Steptoe and Son, Meet the Wife, Till Death Us Do Part, All Gas and Gaiters, Up Pompeii!, Not in Front of the Children, Me Mammy, That's Your Funeral, The Liver Birds, Are You Being Served? and Last of the Summer Wine, which is the world's longest running sitcom, having run from January 1973 to August 2010.

In March 2014, it was announced that Comedy Playhouse would make a return that year with three new episodes.

The series began in 1961 at the prompting of Tom Sloan, Head of BBC Light Entertainment at the time. Galton and Simpson were no longer writing for Tony Hancock and Sloan asked them to write ten one-offs with the hope that one might become established as a series. Thus, the first two series of Comedy Playhouse were written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, but after that the episodes were written by various writers. In all, 27 series started from a pilot in the Comedy Playhouse. The first eight series were in black-and-white, with the rest being in colour. Like many television programmes from the time, many of 1960s episodes are missing presumed wiped.


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Wikipedia

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