It's happened to me a couple times, I think folks use it instead of the term quirky or autistic because because the only thing I share in common is autism. In contrast I am a violent misanthropic redneck who radiates trauma and depression in ambient enough quantities that I can instantly pack bond with veterans and Slavs.

Like most British TV comedy series, it was recorded with a live studio audience, rather than a "laugh track" added later - so there's probably no versions that exist without it.

There's a chance that it's a 5:1 mix rather than stereo, and might have the audience on a different channel to the main dialogue - which would then be fairly easily to remove in something like Audacity.

Otherwise your options are turning the sound off and reading text subtitles, or using an "llm-powered" vocal remover.

Can't recommend anything I'm afraid. But I will warn - I've seen edits that remove the laughing from I think it was Friends? It really ratchets the awkwardness to 200% with all the actors pausing for silence, I'm not sure what's worse.

I'm about to blow your mind: the IT Crowd has a live studio audience. One of the specials goes over each cast member and shows bloopers and such, and you can see them in several shots. I believe they also talk briefly about the audience, though it's been a while. If I remember right, they would take the audience reactions of two takes and sort of merge them together.

Would not recommend. If you've seen shows like that with the laugh tracks removed, they're dreadful. Full of dead pauses while the characters wait between their lines for the laughs to end.

Fun fact: a half hour comedy script is 22 pages (22 minutes of content, after the ad breaks). But a half hour comedy script for a show with laugh tracks is 11 pages, 11 minutes. Literally half the show's runtime is taken up by laugh tracks.

The original BBC IT crowdbdidntnhave a laugh track, did it?

I don't understand the struggle some people have with laugh tracks. You can just use your own judgement and decide for yourself if you find the things funny or not.

IT crowd did have that one gag where the character said he's putting this fire with the rest of the fire when that should be a self-explanatory step when sorting out a fire. You have to sort it before you can out it (for any lost non-nerds that somehow ended up in here).

Hm, only other coming to mind is Mythic Quest, maybe. I don't think it reaches the same heights of funny but still balances around nerd culture. I also have a sweet spot for Superstore but that might just stem from my time in retail.

Better off Ted is in the similar vein of Office Space in satirizing big corporations

What's annoying about the ones I know is that they're holier than thou "woke" types that like to remind you about how problematic your media is, but have huge blind spots for the things they like. How do they not pick up on the issues with BBT?

The fun things about losing respect for one teacher's credentials is it also casts doubt on every teacher's credentials. It was pretty depressing to learn that academia is driven more by ego than by knowledge and education.