‘Live in Front of a Studio Audience’ Encore: How to Watch, What Time and What Channel

ABC is re-airing the second installment of Live in Front of a Studio Audience Tuesday night, which recreates two episodes of classic Norman Lear sitcoms. Tuesday’s installment kicks off at 8 p.m. ET, and will once again showcase today’s A-list talent recreating episodes of both All in the Family and its spinoff, Good Times.

The ABC Network comes as part of most basic cable packages or can be picked up with a digital TV antenna. Streamers can also check out the episode when it airs live as part of Hulu Live TV and YouTube TV, although the latter recently hiked its prices. The castmembers for tonight’s encore presentation include Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei as Archie and Edith Bunker, Viola Davis and Andre Braugher as George and Florida Evans, along with Ike Barinholtz, Tiffany Haddish, Ellie Kemper, and SNL alum Jay Pharoah as J.J. Walker. There have been plans to produce a third installment of Live, although plans have been shelved since due to widespread shutdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Tonight’s edition of Live will also feature a now-famed segment featuring Martin Short, who jokingly introduces a recreation of The Facts of Life before the actual episode of Good Times. Speaking with PopCulture back in May, set designer Bernard Vyzga spoke about the complications that came about working out such an elaborate gag to be performed live. To do this, a set was built just for the theme song, as well as a smaller one for Short, who came out and started belting out the theme to The Facts of Life. Short’s set then “had to be struck within the body of the show on a commercial break,” Vyzga explained. Then, another set was built for the Good Times theme, which was performed by Patti LaBelle and Anthony Anderson.

“The concept I came up with, [along] with Andy Fisher’s original creative idea was to recreate the opening stock elements of the Good Times opening credits,” Vyzga continued. “You went from wide shot Chicago to closer shots and then you saw Cabrini-Green, the public housing, and then you went to a closeup of the windows of the apartment and we sort of created these moving panels that gave you the sense of that the big Good Times graphic for a background. Then part of the opening to reveal the gospel chorus. So it became a theatrical way presented a theme song.”