Hazel Tours: Episode 1
Hazel Tours is a sitcom based around an amateur tour guide in a Scottish border town. As a sitcom, it features the BBC house style of sitcom intro sequences: the show title, the names of the creators and then either applause or a jingle follows.
The show begins in media res as the audience is introduced to Hazel as she is promoting her tours. Her character's history is established quickly as a troublemaker through the first joke with the librarian who sees her as a nuisance. The audience is also introduced to her ex-boyfriend who is portrayed as being more pathetic than her. The portrayal of gender dynamics creates humour through emasculation. However, we also see a tragic side to her character as her rocky relationship with her father is alluded to. This may be later played for laughs as the subversion of dramatic expectations is frequently used in sitcoms to create humourous situations. Another point of humour is the general amateur nature of her endeavour. The BBC Sounds website has childish art as the thumbnail for the program, referenced in the show itself as having been created by her little sister.
There are no specific audio-based gags in the show but a laugh track is used as per sitcom convention. Most humour comes from the dialogue.
The representation of social groups within the show is interesting as a young woman being the singular title character is fairly uncommon. The setting of a rural town in the Scottish-English border is also representation of a frequently under-represented social group within British comedy as they either focus on a tightly knit group or function as critique of a bigger society. This setting meets somewhere in the middle. Radio 4 is also most popular in the south of England so the setting is unconventional and perhaps not relatable to the average Radio 4 listener, but it may also work in attracting more listeners from the north and Scotland to Radio 4.
It is therefore overall a very unconventional production for Radio 4 standards but perhaps a strategy in attracting a different audience to Radio 4. It thus holds a lot of value in understanding the type of new audience that Radio 4 may be interested in attracting
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