People Just Do Nothing Review - s3 ep1

People Just Do Nothing is a comedy that started on YouTube and got picked up by BBC3 to turn it into a show that would reach a wider audience. The target audience for BBC3 is ‘young audiences’ and ’16-34 year-olds are its centre of gravity: people who are young in spirit and mindset.’ As the show details around young upcoming artists trying to make it as musicians in West London, it would appeal to younger audiences more as they grew up with the kind of hip-hop and grime genres. The fact that the show uses slag too, such as ‘Bruvva’ (meaning brother) is more suited to a younger audience as they are more likely to use and understand slang compared to the older generation.

The comedy follows a group of ‘chavs’ (standing for council house and violent) wanting to make it in the world as grime musicians. In fact, they are a group of wannabe’s who don’t know anything about music technology or how to produce music. In this particular episode they hire a studio for an hour, thinking they can produce a song in that time which is unrealistic, speaking from experience personally (and reflected in the show of course). They continue to show off to the camera and the audience by making us believe they know things about music, even though it is obvious that they don’t, which makes us laugh at their expense.

The fact that the show started on YouTube also helps with the target audience, due to the fact ‘In March, YouTube drew 31.8 million users aged 18 to 24 (98.3 percent of U.S. Internet users in that age bracket) who spent an average of 10 hours, 15 minutes on the site.’ Which means that PJDN would more likely have younger viewers of their show as ‘BBC Three’s 18-to-30-year-old target audience who, as the channel’s fate suggests, do most of their viewing online these days anyway.’ This also helps the show stay to its roots online and attract the same audience that they had on YouTube due to the fact that those statistics show that younger people use the internet to watch TV shows rather than an actual TV.

The show shares some similarities with others. For example, in People Just Do Nothing there is a stereotypical tall, lanky, dopey character. This could be a reflection of shows such as The Inbetweeners, as the character ‘Neil’ fits the description that I just described. There is also a ring leader (from what i can tell) type figure between these shows. Allan Mustafa plays the character ‘Grindah’ who seems to be the respected one who tells people what to do and talks utter rubbish half the time. This is shown in the Inbetweeners through the character ‘Jay’ who likes to think he knows it all and lies to seem cool. Being a mockumentry, it is similar to The Office in that respect where the documentary is scripted to be funny and ‘mock’ real life events and perhaps what people would create a documentary about. They also have an ‘interviewer’ asking them questions to mimic an interview within the mockumentry. It is done to make it seem more real and giving an insight into their lives even though it is scripted. This is also reflected in the US show Modern Family in which they talk to the ‘interviewer’ behind the scenes to make it seem real and to give the illusion to the audience that the family life they have is real and relatable.

References:

BBC Three. (N/A). BBC Three Commissioning. Available: http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/articles/bbc-three. Last accessed 8.10.17.

Eric Blattberg. (2015). The demographics of YouTube, in 5 charts.Available: https://digiday.com/media/demographics-youtube-5-charts/. Last accessed 8.10.17.

Gerard O’Donovan. (2014). People Just Do Nothing, BBC iPlayer, review: ‘impressive’. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/tv-and-radio-reviews/10828816/People-Just-Do-Nothing-BBC-iPlayer-review-impressive.html. Last accessed 8.10.17.