OCR A-Level Stranger Things Audience

A complete OCR A-Level Media Studies lesson exploring audience appeal, Netflix distribution, character types and representation in Stranger Things Season 1 Episode 1.

This fully editable PowerPoint (.pptx) lesson focuses on Stranger Things, Season 1 Episode 1: The Vanishing of Will Byers, for OCR A-Level Media Studies Paper 2: Evolving Media, Section B – Long Form Television Drama.

The lesson begins by exploring how Stranger Things appeals to both a mass audience and a specialised audience. Students define key audience terms including mass audience, specialised audience, target audience, consumption, response, active audience and passive audience, before applying these ideas to the show’s Netflix release, 1980s nostalgia, sci-fi/horror appeal and Dungeons & Dragons culture.

Students then learn key context about Stranger Things, including its creators The Duffer Brothers, its hybrid genre of sci-fi, horror, supernatural and mystery, its 1983 Hawkins setting, and its release as a Netflix global streaming series using the binge model.

The lesson also explores why Netflix released all eight episodes in summer 2016, considering how this appealed to younger online audiences and supported binge-watching rather than a traditional weekly broadcast model.

Students then move into character types and representation, predicting and analysing roles such as leader/hero, outsider/victim and adult authority. They consider how Stranger Things reflects and challenges 1980s social attitudes through gender, age, class, ethnicity and stereotypes. The main activity asks students to create character profile slides for characters from Episode 1, including narrative role, personality traits and social representation.

The lesson includes a model character profile for Will Byers, positioning him as the victim/catalyst whose disappearance drives the narrative, while also exploring how his vulnerability challenges traditional masculine stereotypes.

This lesson covers:

OCR A-Level Media Studies
Paper 2: Evolving Media
Section B: Long Form Television Drama
Stranger Things S1E1
The Vanishing of Will Byers
Audience appeal
Mass audience
Specialised audience
Target audience
Active and passive audiences
Audience consumption and response
Netflix
Binge-watching
Younger online audiences
1980s nostalgia
Sci-fi, horror and supernatural genres
Dungeons & Dragons culture
Character types
Propp narrative roles
Representation
Age, gender, ethnicity and class
1980s stereotypes
Will Byers
Eleven
Joyce
Hopper

What is included:

Fully editable PowerPoint (.pptx) lesson
Do Now task on mass and specialised audiences
Teacher feedback/model answer slide
Key audience terminology
Context slide on Stranger Things
Netflix release and distribution gap-fill task
Teacher feedback/model answers
Character types prediction task
Word bank for character traits and representation
Printable