How Well Do You Know Sitcoms Around the World?

Sitcoms: A Brief Overview by Country

• Sitcoms are a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode.
• Sitcoms can be recorded in front of a studio audience, depending on the program's production format.
• Critics disagree over the utility of the term "sitcom" in classifying shows that have come into existence since the turn of the century.
• The first television sitcom is said to be Pinwright's Progress, ten episodes being broadcast on the BBC in the United Kingdom between 1946 and 1947.
• Canada has generally fared poorly with their sitcom offerings, with relatively few Canadian sitcoms attaining notable success in Canada or internationally.
• Sitcoms started appearing on Indian television in the 1980s, and SAB TV is one of the leading channels of India dedicated entirely to Sitcoms.
• El Chavo del Ocho, which ran from 1971 to 1980, was the most watched show in the Mexican television and had a Latin American audience of 350 million viewers per episode at its peak of popularity during the mid-1970s.
• Gliding On, a popular sitcom in New Zealand in the early 1980s, won multiple awards over the course of its run.
• The majority of British sitcoms are 30 minutes long and are recorded on studio sets in a multiple-camera setup.
• The sitcom format was born in January 1926 with the initial broadcast of Sam 'n' Henry on WGN radio in Chicago, Illinois.
• American sitcoms are generally written to run a total of 22 minutes in length, leaving eight minutes for advertisements in a 30 minute timeslot.
• Some popular British shows have been successfully adapted for the US.
• On Tiptoes and Shabhaye Barareh were among the first and most important sitcoms that led to the growth of this type of comedy in Iran.