Ealing Studios are synonymous with the comedy films produced there in the 1940s and 1950s, but for over thirty years they were the home of filmed productions at the BBC. The BBC acquired the site from the struggling film company in 1955 and transformed it into its Television Film Studios (TFS) operation starting in 1955.
Videotape recording technology was still under development and even by the 1980s videotape was still too cumbersome for recording on location in broadcast quality, so 35mm and later super 16mm film were the primary format for non-studio sequences in dramas and comedies, as well as documentaries and news programmes.
In its heyday more than 50 film crews used Ealing as their HQ, with cutting rooms, developing facilities, telecine machines and studio spaces for filming inserts which appeared in some of the most famous programmes of the era; the filmed sequences of Cathy Come Home and Z-Cars were edited here and Quatermass and the Pit and Colditz and The Singing Detective were completed here.
