The British working class on holiday: a critical reading of ITV's Benidorm

Informed by the thesis that media representations are influential channels for the birth and reinforcement of discursive constructions, this article will focus on representation in ITV's successful sitcom Benidorm (2007–). The corpus analysed includes the show's first four seasons and 2009 special, which are all the Benidorm materials available on DVD at the time of writing. Given this TV production's subject matter, insights will be provided into Spain's sand-and-sun tourism industry, with particular reference to the resort of Benidorm. Benidorm will be placed within the wider British sitcom tradition and humour will be treated as intersecting with power and social structures and so inseparable from social and national discourses. The interface will be explored between televised humour and the discourses of tourism, with particular reference to current British identity issues such as how British classed identities perceive Other imagined communities, in particular, Spain and the Spanish; and how such identities are performed spatially whilst on holiday.