Audience Pleasures- Bad Education

The Narrative pleasure in Bad Education is that the main character Alfie gets into trouble about something and then continues to lie about his problems which lead him into worse situations. This always ends in the lies and problems coming out in a humorous way. In this episode there is the problem of marking the papers which he keeps putting off, he then thinks he has solved the problem however the audience know it won’t work and therefore find it funny. This then comes out later on parents evening when he has to tell the parents which is humorous for the audience as they can watch him struggling. The other main lie he tells in this episode is that one of his student’s parents has a disease in order to get a date with another teacher. He continues lying about it to her and the narrative is snowballing until the truth comes out at the end of parents evening which provides audience pleasure as they can laugh at him embarrassing himself. In the end this is resolved as parents evening is over and Alfie isn’t fired, it also shows him and the student at the end to leave the audience with a feeling of satisfaction that everything has gone back to normal after the incident.

The suspense of waiting for the poor decisions the main character has made to catch up to him keeps the audience entertained. Even though the main character makes a lot of mistakes and isn’t a very good teacher, the audience still supports him and stay on his side because a lot of the other characters aren’t likeable and Alfie is the most realistic and relatable one even though he gets into extreme situations. The show also makes the audience feel like they are part of the class who also laugh at their teacher even though they like him because he has good intentions and is entertaining even though he makes poor decisions. This is because he acts like a teenager and the target audience is older teens who can relate to him and therefore he is more likeable. For example in this episode he avoids marking the papers in a way that teenagers avoid doing their homework and he also makes references to pop culture which will be amusing to teenager and people in their twenties.

The audience also has pleasure of recognition which means they understand the personalities of the different characters. This is because each character Is a very over-exaggerated stereotypes of different groups of people. They enjoy the anticipation of what the character will say next including things like catchphrases. An example of this in bad education is how the head teacher always talks about ‘banter’ or how Chantelle always tried to flirt with Alfie. These running jokes are pleasing to the audience as they find them familiar and have a sense that they are in on the joke.   There is also difference within repetition which means the audience recognise how the narrative is similar in each episode however there is a different problem and different gags in each episode which keeps it interesting and entertaining for the audience.