The document summarizes and compares two British radio dramas - The Archers and Queenie. The Archers is a long-running soap opera set in the Yorkshire countryside that focuses on relationships and drama among middle-aged female characters. Queenie is a shorter drama that tells a single narrative from the perspective of a teenage girl dealing with emotional situations. Both use music and sound effects to signal scene changes and engage their target audiences, though they differ in tone, characters, and storytelling approaches.

1. Radio Drama – The Archers
I started watching “the Archers” which is a radio drama series, at the start of the radio
drama we can clearly tell it is a soap opera because of the situation the characters are in and
the dialogue it is written as. The dialogue and speech the radio drama is written in comes
across as if the characters were speaking natural and not reading off a script to me as an
audience member the radio drama sounds like the itv show Emmerdale. Its obvious to the
audience that the characters are from Yorkshire, this enhances the radio drama and
engages the target audience. the target audience the radio drama focuses on are middle
age females this would draw them in because of its interesting drama and arguments, you
can clearly tell this because of its similar storyline to other popular soap operas like
EastEnders and coronation street. The reason the target audience focuses on mostly women
is because of it love interests and not very men could relate to that.
At the start of the episode I watched music starts playing which is to case the audience to
get ready and excited to watch it. The reason the radio drama excites the audience with this
is because returning and regular watchers will have heard the cliffhanger the last episode
was left on. Although the sound faded in and out to allow the audience to know when a
scene had changed and that the characters had moved to a different location which helped
the audience follow the story line better.
The radio drama is a single narrative because it follows the storyline of Joe and
remembering his dad who was a farmer before his passing, this is unlike any other soap
opera because they usually focus on a number of storylines rather than one. With the soap
operas single narrative it allows the story to be told in more detail and allows the audience
to feel more involved and engaged with the storylines.
The dialogue in the radio drama consists of 3-5 people who I imagine to be in their 30s –
50s, they all seemto be speaking naturally rather than off a script which is what the
producers in theory want. The sound and music in the radio drama seems to be playing
dietetically this means the diegetic sound and music is playing at the time of recording, this
gives a more real feel to the radio drama rather than the editors adding it in when recording
is finished. There are a few silent spots throughout the drama which sets the tone and the
feeling for the audience during the show.
Radio Dramas – Queenie
The second radio drama I watched was “Queenie”, which from the start you can clearly tell
the genre is drama. The drama has a single narrative which could be one of its key pull in
points for the target audience because they may like to just focus on one story line rater
than multiple. Throughout the full episode which is only 17 minutes long, only one person
spoke through it which may be one of the dramas flaws because people might get bored
with just hearing one person through the full thing.

2. The radio drama starts off with intro music which allows the audience to get ready for when
the drama starts, also as the intro music carry’s on it gets returning audiences to get more
excited. The drama also uses music to show the increase in the timing in the genre, this is
different to any other because they usually use a fade in and out to notify the audience
when a scene is changing or when the time is speeding up. At the end of the drama it has
outro music which allows the audience to calm down and get back to reality which also
helps them process what happened at the end of the cliffhanger.
Further into the drama a phone sounds which allows the target audience which are teenage
girls to engage with the characters. The reason for this is because it allows the cast to pull
the audience in with the emotional situations on the radio drama. Overall this allows the
audience to feel more connected and engaged with the drama because they can relate to
what is happening throughout it.
The dialogue in the drama relatively consists of 2-3 people all in their teenage years,
throughout the drama there is only one microphone which stops the audience from
becoming fully immersed in the show and blocks them from thinking its real. A change in
setting is indicated by a change in music which allowed the audience to know where she is,
also there is a lot of background sounds such as typing on a phone at the start and
footsteps. The target audience in the drama is obviously teenage girls because they can
feel immersed in the drama and feel connected to the plot.
Both of these radio dramas are different to each other because “the archers” talk about
how Joe made everyone feel in the community and about what he knew about certain
things. And on Queenie it talks about how she had been on this adult grounding situation
for three weeks which could be some sort of counselling, queenie is also more emotional
than the archers which is more appealing to their target audience. Both of these dramas are
very different with their plot and dialogue but both talk about emotion and feelings but in
very different ways for their target audience to connect to.