TV Comedy: A GCSE Study Day at BFI Southbank

Comedy in its various forms has become one of the most popular, enduring and successful fixtures on TV schedules. This study day will explore different styles of comedy, focusing on forms and conventions, institutional contexts and how the comedian, be they sitcom star or standup, engages with social representations to make meanings relevant to their audience. The session is designed to prepare students for OCR’s Topic options as well as providing ideas and approaches to controlled assessments for other boards. The morning session will be clip-based and focus on different approaches to studying comedy and a presentation on the history of the British sitcom using titles from the BFI National Archive. In the afternoon there will be a screening, followed by an industry guest who will answer questions about the process of creating successful comedy.