Today's TV comedies -- My Name is Earl, The Office, Everybody Hates Chris, even Corner Gas -- are all shot like mini-movies. No laugh tracks, no studio audience, no, "Hi, Honey, I'm home!"

But Will & Grace -- which bows out Thursday after eight seasons and 196 episodes -- is a throwback to those classic, four-camera sitcoms like The Bob Newhart Show.

The San Fernando Valley lot has even deeper comedy roots. It was built by silent comedy pioneer Mack Sennett back in the late '20s before becoming a B-movie western factory. CBS bought the lot in the early '60s and cranked out everything from Gilligan's Island to Get Smart to The Addams Family. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Seinfeld also called it home.

All this TV history was not lost on the main Will & Grace cast members -- Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally and Sean Hayes. They, along with director Jim Burrows and producers Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, welcomed critics last January to the set.

"We're really an old-fashioned sitcom in a lot of ways,"said McCormack, the Canadian among the series' four leads. He remembers auditioning exclusively for four-camera sitcoms in 1997. "Now," he said, "Desperate Housewives is a comedy."

Mullally -- who will return with a talk show in September -- seemed destined for Stage 17 success. When she was 11, her parents took her to her very first sitcom taping, an episode of The Bob Newhart Show. "I sat right there," she said, pointing up into the bleachers.

When he was four or five, Hayes attended a Laugh-In taping on the same soundstage where he worked for eight years as Will and Grace's flamboyant friend, Jack. "We had family friends in San Diego and we all drove up here," he said.

Except for the cluttered living room set, not much has changed. The high, wide bleachers looked like they hadn't been swept since the '60s. Old black phones marked "switcher" and "recordist" seemed from another era. Even the crew hadn't changed much. Will & Grace property master Gilbert Spragg was a prop man on Laugh-In.

Even the main living room set -- apartment "9C" -- looked like it had been dressed with furniture from a garage sale. Among the dusty books on the shelves of the den was a biography of Truman Capote. The refrigerator was packed with more food than you'd find in anybody's real house.

Backstage, the walls were littered with Polaroids of the cast and crew with various visitors over the years. A poster of "Chas Burrows Lonely Hearts Club Band" featured the four leads in Pepper costumes with Will & Grace spelled out in flowers.

What was new about this situation comedy was the situation: Two of the four main characters happened to be gay. It doesn't seem that earth-shattering today but, eight years ago, at the very first Will & Grace press tour session, NBC executives instructed the cast to downplay the gay storyline and to use the word "friendship" a lot.

There were no such restrictions last January. When Burrows remarked it was "a seminal show," McCormack cracked, "Do you mean 'seminal' in a gay way? Because in eight years, my character's not gotten any 'seminal.' "

McCormack has had enough of all the criticism that Will's sex life was kept in the closet. "First of all, nobody wants to see sitcom characters have sex," he said. "I didn't even want to see the girls from Sex & the City have sex."

He pointed out "half of America would have tuned out" if the series had been all about Will's bed hopping. When the show premiered in 1998, America was still freaked over Ellen DeGeneres coming out on her sitcom. This was before Queer as Folk, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Brokeback Mountain.

Perhaps because the show was a good old-fashioned sitcom, it was easier for the public to embrace. The series won a People's Choice Award and drew 17 million viewers a week by the 2001-02 season.

A parade of guests, including big Hollywood names like Madonna, Cher, Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Lopez, Matt Damon, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore, Michael Douglas and, on a more regular basis, Harry Connick Jr., helped goose ratings and kept the series "Must See" for years.

McCormack remembered how excited he was when he first learned director Sidney Pollack would be playing his dad. "He's not a big star for some people in America, but for me that was it. I fell down and wet my pants."

The series also became famous for its double entendres. McCormack's favourite early on was when Will and Grace were talking about an upcoming election. Will was voting for the gay guy. "What do you know about this guy? What are his positions?" Grace asked. "I don't know," Will said. "I think he's on top."

McCormack recalled that "hooha" was also out. Also "teabag" couldn't be used as a verb. A scene where the rest of the cast cupped Messing's breasts came with specific "no nipple touching" notes. "You could cup, support them," Messing said. "That's what supporting means," said Hayes, who won a best supporting actor Emmy on the series.

The past few seasons, the cast also performed a couple of live shows. "After the first one, we all kind of looked at each other and said, on an energy level, we'd love to do this every week," said McCormack. "I strive for perfection, and perfection gets you nowhere," he added. "With live shows, all everybody talks about the next day is the f--ups and laughing."

This season, neither guest stars like Britney Spears nor live shows nor even dirty jokes seemed to attract more than 7 or 8 million viewers a week. The series will end with a one-hour retrospective followed by an hour-long finale. Creators Mutchnick and Kohan wrote the ending. Do Will and Grace continue to cohabitate or does pregnant Grace reconcile with hubby Leo (Connick Jr.)?

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