The London Sitcom Map

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UsVsThem, prolific creators of topical news games (more!), have put together this great looking map showing the London locations of a large number of classic British sitcoms. There’s a good spread across the whole of London, except in the south-east. Like tube lines, it seems sitcoms ignore this part of London. And as one Reddit commenter (where I first noticed the map) noted, many of the classic sitcoms were set in, at the time, tough looking neighbourhoods, most of which have now gentrified to the point that the programmes would have appear to have a very different setting if they were filmed there now.

The map includes Birds of a Feather which is based in Chingford – although technically that’s not London, the area certainly feels like it is, so it’s very worthy of inclusion in a London map like this.

We like the adornments surrounding the map itself – it’s constructed within an old-style TV set and includes caricatures of some of the most famous faces of London sitcoms. Like all good London maps, it also includes the Thames – Londoners’ standard point of reference. The map itself is clear and simple, with the borough boundaries drawn in for context, and little else, so that the map doesn’t distract from the main emphasis of the graphic – that London has played host to a great number of our TV comedies.

(While we are on the topic of UsVsThem, here’s a great “guess the mystery tube station” game. Think you know the standard tube map by heart?)

Map created by UsVsThem, based on an original set of data on a Google Map researched by Jonn Elledge.