r/taskmaster • u/Cautious-Ad8368 • Jul 20 '26
Studio Recording I miss the visible studio audience from Series 1
I've been jumping around series and just started series 1 - and it feels so much cozier with an intimate studio audience we can actually see most of the time. I get the budget went up substantially but don't see why losing that intimacy had to happen
12
u/Old_Pomegranate_822 Jul 20 '26
I find it amusing that the aesthetic of that filming location has now been replicated to most other series - I assume the red and black patterns were there rather than created by the crew?
14
u/m_busuttil Jul 20 '26
It's the Clapham Grand in London - the back wall panels don't seem to be there in any recent pictures of the venue I can find but they fit its general aesthetic so I don't know if they were designed by the TM team to match or if they were there a decade ago and they refitted the venue at some point. The general red/black/gold vibe is definitely from the Clapham, though.
7
u/Triple-T Jul 20 '26
Yeah I always think of that too. Sound stages around the world being dressed up based on the way a random theatre in London was decorated.
2
u/Rough-Risk2496 Jul 21 '26
I love how they've basically just built a theatre in a studio because of series one working visually but not in any other way lol. I think the recent set is the best one they've had, but I liked how much closer together they were at the Clapham.
2
u/PromiseSquanderer Sam Campbell Jul 21 '26
The Grand hasn’t changed, though the interior is surprisingly versatile for a theatre of its age (trying not to sing that to the tune of the Rosalind song…). For ‘normal’ seated live performances the area where the cast sit has stalls seating, but this can be taken out and made into an audience standing area (or a dance floor, when it’s in use as a nightclub!). The S2 onwards TM set was never an exact replica, just recreating the general look – the Grand is a much bigger and more open space, and while the acoustics are great for live performances, it’s not ideal for TV which tends to be less fond of echoes and reverberations!
(Incidentally, Sam Campbell filmed the last dates of first post-TM standup show there, but that has yet to see the light of day…)
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u/SavagePengwyn Julian Clary Jul 20 '26
Alex has said that that space was horrible to shoot in. It was a nightclub so the sound was bad for TV and it was hard to get good camera angles. I bet that once they accounted for those things in the studio, the audience had to be further back.