Task 7 - The Inbetweeners

1. Task 7
‘The Inbetweeners’ is a British coming of age sitcom television series which originally aired
on E4 from 2008–2010.
It was created and written by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris. The series follows the
misadventures of suburban teenager Will (Simon Bird) and his friends Simon (Joe Thomas),
Neil (Blake Harrison), and Jay (James Buckley) at the fictional Rudge Park Comprehensive.
The show involves situations of school life, uncaring school staff, friendship, male
bonding, lad culture, and largely failed sexual encounters.
The series has aired 18 episodes, this has been done over 3 series and each episode lasts for
25 minutes. The Inbetweeners Movie was released on 17 August 2011 to box office success,
and a sequel followed on 6 August 2014.
The show was nominated for Best Situation Comedy at BAFTA twice, in 2009 and 2010. At
the British Academy Television Awards 2010, it won the Audience Award, and in 2010 the
show won the Best Sitcom award at the British Comedy Awards. In the 2011 British Comedy
Awards, the show also won the award for Outstanding Contribution to British Comedy.
Genre:
The Inbetweeners fits into the genre of Comedy. It also has some secondary genres, these
are ‘Blue Comedy’, ‘Cringe Comedy’ and ‘Slapstick’. There are three main purposes in
categorising texts into genres. These are influencing a production in order to fit into a
particular genre, to give insight into ways audiences consume texts and to help consider
texts from an academic perspective.
The mood of a media production also influences the genre into which it is categorised. The
mood of a text refers to the atmosphere of the piece. This is the overriding feeling of a
scene or part of a scene. In comedies there is usually a jokey/unserious mood.
Narrative:
Narrative is the organisation of events that reveals and translates the storyline or plot. In
film and television programmes, narrative is presented through the arrangement of the
moving image material. How the materials are selected and pieced together determines the
nature of the narrative. It can be applied to all forms of media, including books, magazine
articles, radio shows and video games. Narrative also shapes the events, characters and the
arrangement of time within these texts. The human mind needs narrative to make sense of
things. We connect events and make interpretations based on those connections. In
everything we seek a beginning, a middle and an end. We understand and construct
meaning using our experience of reality and of previous texts. Each text becomes part of the
previous and the next through its relationship with the audience.
Season 1, episode 3 ‘The Inbetweeners’ tried something new and moved away from the
typical school setting. In this episode Simon is about to take his driving test, but does not
feel confident that he will pass first time. Will, Jay and Neil are over-optimistically discussing
the possibilities of one of the group owning a car. Before Simon even sits his test, they have

2. already decided to go to Thorpe Park – where Neil works as a mascot. During Simon's
driving test, he is examined by a female examiner who tries to put him at ease with the use
of sexual connotations; Simon is submissive to her advances and passes his driving test. His
dad buys him an old yellow Fiat Cinquecento Hawaii as a present, (to his dislike and
embarrassment) exacerbated by taunts from his friends. Simon then collects Will and Jay to
take them to Thorpe Park. After the journey – which includes "stalking" a car full of girls and
interfering in a funeral procession – the boys finally arrive - although things do not go to
plan there either. Jay detaches the front passenger door when he impatiently opens it whilst
Simon is still reversing, and Will finally gets to the front of the queue for Nemesis Inferno,
only to find there is only space for him and not his friends. He insults whoever has pushed
in, denouncing them as "arseholes", before sitting down next to them to see they are from
the "Happy Foundation", a charity for people with Down syndrome. After the ride, they
return to the car, which has been vandalised by the Happy Foundation. This episode
contains a lot of different focus points that young people go through such as learning to
drive and taking a driving test.
The Inbetweeners is a linear production, the word linear refers to a media text being shown
in chronological order - going forward in time, rather than back. This allows the audience to
follow the storyline and deal with situations in the same time frame as the characters.
The Inbetweeners is a closed series, this is due to the fact that the series has come to an
end. Each story has its own individual story line although links to other episodes are made
throughout the rest of the series.
Target Audience:
The target audience for the inbetweeners were children in their late teens and their
parents, it was a show that both children and parents could enjoy the crude use of humour.
It was shown at 9.00pm so that parents would be back from work to watch but also so it
wasn’t too late for younger viewers to watch. Although all the episodes are not aired on tv
anymore they are available to watch on 4oD; which allows audiences who were younger
when it was aired to watch the show now they are of age.
Impact on Audience:
The impact that a programme has on an audience is extremely important in terms of how
well a show does. In season 1, episode 3, the audience impact centres around the fact that
they want to take people back so that they can remember what it was like when they were
the characters age. Throughout the rest of the series the audience impact centres on how
growing up through school is like and what actually goes on.
Audience effect theories:
The idea and theory of ‘moral panics’ was created by Stanley Cohen in 1972. The theory
stated that a production focused on the negative aspects of a subject or story and
exaggerated upon it to create, what audiences thought felt like a worldwide issue. A key
issue in the industry involves moral panics going too far. If the media portray issues that are
occurring as horrific, then it will be being used in the wrong way. The media is used to

3. enforce a message, not scare its audience. Moral panics occur quite often thanks, in large,
to exaggerated reporting and responses to certain groups in society.
Throughout the series moral panics are used a lot. An example of this is through the use of
alcohol abuse and underage drinking, we can see in many episodes that underage students
are served alcohol not only in shops but also in pubs.
Blumler and Katz’s Uses and Gratifications theory (1974) is one that can be applied to any
media production. This theory suggests that media is used to satisfy the needs of the
audience. According to Blumler and Katz, there are four main needs to satisfy and each
media text could cover at least one. The four categories are diversion, personal
relationships, personal identity and surveillance. Diversion, means that a production is a
form of entertainment to distract people from the reality of society - a form of escapism
into the surreal, or another world reflecting one’s own. The second aspect is surveillance.
Audiences want to feel safe or see what not to do to jeopardize their safety. The third
aspect is the use of personal relationships, and they are used to show how other people or
characters interact with each other. Finally, personal identity is used to ensure that films to
be effective in capturing one’s attention. Audiences should be able to identify with the
characters and almost see themselves reflected within one of the on-screen characters. In
media productions, audience members should be able to connect with and identify with a /
or a few of the characters, as it can enhance the realismof the storyline and make it that
much more thrilling and believable. Each member of a production has a characteristic and
personal trait that audiences should be able to relate to.
The Inbetweeners is most commonly watched as a form of diversion. The fictional show is
used to distract people and take people away from their own lives - to get out of their own
head, as it allows you to be in others situation and feel for the characters and to be in their
shoes.
Personal relationships is less focused upon in the series yet personal identity is. People may
be able to identify themselves within a character. Discussions are had between viewers on
who out of the 4 friends that they are. They may find a character to have some traits that
they have themselves. This in turn may help them relate and/ or form a bond with the series
or individual characters. Audiences may begin to watch the show as a form of diversion, yet
as they form relationships with characters or can identify with them in terms of their
relationships with other people, the use of the text will evolve from diversion into personal
identity and relationships. These aspects will them become the main aspect and reason for
watching the programme.