Broadcast format During its entire four-year run
Tolka Row remained at the centre of
Telefís Éireann's prime time schedule. The
pilot episode was broadcast at 19:20 on Friday, 3 January 1964. The first two series aired once a week on Fridays at that time. The third series moved to Sunday evenings where it usually aired at 19:45. The last two series returned to Friday evenings with a broadcast time of 20:00. Every episode was pre-recorded in black and white before the broadcast date.
Sets For all five series, the complete set of
Tolka Row (house interiors and exteriors) was erected inside Studio 1 of Telefís Éireann's
Television Centre in Dublin. Sets were constructed and removed on an ad hoc basis. There are a number of reasons for the use of an indoor studio; the main one being that the infancy of production techniques at the time did not allow easy recording and editing of sequences filmed in different locations. In spite of this some scenes were filmed on location in such places as
Dublin Airport.
Missing episodes Only the final episode, broadcast on 31 May 1968, remains in RTÉ's archives. All other episodes of the series were
wiped after broadcast so the
videotapes could be reused to make other programmes, and all episodes remain
lost. ==References==