I’m guessing it’s going to be almost entirely sitcoms simply because of the nature of the format, but what TV show had/has the fewest number of regular locations, i.e. locations that appeared all or nearly every episode?
For example, Cheers occurred, with rare exceptions, entirely inside the bar. Its regular locations were primarily limited to the bar, the office, and the back room. Even the restroom only made relatively infrequent appearances. Of course Cheers had the advantage of being a very large bar, so various places within the same “room” could essentially be used as a separate location.
Family Ties occurred almost entirely in their living room and kitchen, with occasional forays into the bedrooms.
IIRC, Alf occurred almost entirely in the living room, kitchen, and garage.
They left that room a lot. We just didn’t get to follow them when they did.
Barney Miller was going to be my contribution also. In the first couple seasons, we saw Barney’s apartment fairly often, and occasionally the homes of some of the other detectives. But as the show went on, it became the ultimate workplace sitcom, with all of the action taking place in the squadroom.
Cheers, to me, is the ultimate winner, at least for a full budget show. It really is incredible how much story they got out of that bar location. In later seasons, they left it more, but all my best memories are in that bar. The OP had it right away.
And the hallways between these locations. On the rare occasion they visited a character’s apartment, as I recall, the basic layout was always the same - door on the left, large living/dining area, kitchenette to the right, bedrooms unseen in the back somewhere. No doubt a recycled set, redressed for a particular character.
They showed movie sets (for Joey), office space (Chandler, Rachel), massage rooms (Phoebe), restaurants (Monica) and the museum and classroom (and the planetarium) for Ross.
Plus there were a couple of episodes where they were on the road, to Vegas and the Caribbean. We also saw Phoebe’s apartment and the house where her brother lived, and there were several episodes in a hospital as the various characters gave birth.
That was the show that immediately came to mind. The pilot and maybe another episode showed Barney’s home, as his wife was going to be a regular on the show (she was in the opening credits for the first few seasons) but the creators of the show realized that all the comedy was at the precinct and soon phased away any reference to Barney’s home life.
Plus multiple hotel rooms, the roof, the basement, other courtrooms, the ledge outside Harry’s office, the elevators, a cabin in Alaska, various military offices, several boats, various ballrooms…
If you count British shows on this OP, I have the winner.
From 2004 the sitcom The Smoking Room ran for two seasons. The show was set in a workplace smoking room. Characters would enter and leave but the camera never leaves the room. I remember seeing this when BBC America used to actually air shows from England and when they used to air sitcoms.
I really liked it and appreciated it’s unique structure. Telling a story with characters that came and went.
