(4b) Discuss in detail how one programme (Bad Education) offers audience pleasures. Give examples from the programme. [15 marks]

Bad Education has many audience pleasures that attract the audience to keep watching and have interest. Firstly this programme has a narrative resolution, meaning that the programme starts and ends in the same location and throughout it always links back to the start. This is appealing for an audience because it gives them familiarity and a constant assurance that the problem that occurs in the programme will always be resolved and go no further than the location it is set in (the school).

Another attracting factor about the programme is that you can identify with the characters, their immaturity and relationships with each other makes them easy to relate to and also makes them easier to understand and grow emotions for. Such as Mr Wicker; he always gets himself into awkward situations. An example of this is when he decided to pretend one of the student’s Mum’s had died, to impress another female teacher. He tries to discover a common interest with her through a charity she was supporting and ended up getting himself into a web of lies. Usually this would be viewed and completely awful but because you can appreciate his point of view and relate to his personality it makes the audience feel sympathetic for him and also find what he does humorous. Situations like these are commonly referred to as snowballing narratives, meaning that it starts off with a character making a bad decision or silly mistakes, and then it escalates and gets worse and the programme continues. This is appealing to an audience because it creates a build-up and always leaves the reader intrigued to how they character will get out of the situation. This is called a narrative hook.

Verbal comedy is a major part in Bad Education, as it massively relies on innuendos to make the audience laugh. The jokes in this programme are mostly old fashion/classic jokes, usually linked to rude jokes to do with sexual things and in the jokes about toilets etc. They are usually delivered with word play to make them discretely funny and not obviously offensive. Physical comedy is also used alongside verbal to make it more visually satisfying, an example of this is standing on toilets when they boys were telling jokes. These kind of jokes are often repeated throughout the episode so there is familiar humour for the audience.

Bad Education is largely popular for its transgressive pleasures. A lot of the students are sexualised and sexualise eachother for humour and to make their characters relatable. This is evident between one of the students and Mr Wicker, this makes it funny to watch and also displays an awkward and uncomfortable element. It is called taboo language that appeals specifically to the targeted audience, and is specifically created to pleasure them,