10 Amazing TV Scenes Shot In One Take
2. The Conversation - Mad About You
Beating out Review by five whole minutes, The Conversation is an episode of sitcom Mad About You from 1997 that was filmed over a single 22-minute take.
The show that gave us Ursula Buffay before she appeared on Friends, Mad About You starred Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt as a married couple living in New York City. The sixth season of the show is shaken up by the pair having a baby, which is what leads us to The Conversation.
Whilst trying to train their daughter to sleep on her own, Resier and Hunt's characters have an uninterrupted, unedited conversation outside her bedroom. It's filmed on a single camera, with no cuts.
It's an extraordinary piece of television, capturing the raw emotion felt by new parents as sincerely as possible. The entire thing was shot twice, once with an audience and once without. The finished product took just 25 minutes to film, instead of the usual three hours.
One of the greatest examples of a one-take episode and a bottle episode in television history, The Conversation still holds up even with everything that has come after it.