Laugh Track

[Nan]

It's a good bet that this topic has been discussed before, but I'm new here and missed it. I'm aware that the official word is that no laugh track is used and that each episode, after filming, is shown to a live audience and its reactions are what we hear. This simply can't be the entire story. There are howls of laughter after the most gently humorous lines. In one of the Christmas movies, some woman is frequently heard screaming with laughter at dialogue which would cause a reasonable person to merely smile. I suspect that the audience's laughter is "sweetened" with a laugh track. If Peter Sallis ever writes a book about his years with LOTSW, perhaps he'll enlighten us.

 

[Rob1969in]

I have been to a few recordings and I can assure you it`s real laughter, there always seems at every show I have been to (not just summer wine but other before studio audience shows) there is always at least one, normally more person/people that would literally laugh at a funeral, I don`t know what the politically correct term is for those kind of folk, but I call them happy mentalists.

Mind you everyone has a different perspective on what`s funny and Summer Wine caters for all tastes in my opinion, I love all comedy, Fawlty towers to The Office to Bottom to Peep show to Likely lads to Hancocks half hour to Curb your enthusiasm to Seinfeld, yet I still think Summer wine is one of the all time best and most consistently funny sitcoms of all time.

 

[Nan]

So they actually run the completed film before a studio audience and record the laughter and then when it's shown on tv, we hear the audience?

 

[Rob1969in]

Yes well that`s what they do at Summer wine and other studio Sitcoms I have been too, I must say that they do ask you to laugh as loud as possible...

 

[Nan]

That's interesting, Rob, and thanks for your answers! My late husband and I, for so many years, would and could miss any program but LOTSW. We called it "our friends", and our friends were/are on every afternoon on PBS at 1:30. After he died, I couldn't watch it for a few months, but I just began watching it again and am glad I did. It was like coming home.