Situation comedy is present in the programme schemes not only of Slovene but also American television. As a genre, it represents a rather low form of entertainment in popular culture, differentiation can be even observed within the genre itself – we can distinguish between lowbrow, middle-brow and highbrow situation comedy. The thesis deals with the subject matter of a situation comedy and its audience. By analysing individual situation comedies and making primary qualitative analysis of their audience, I was trying to determine the influence of gender and class upon the reception of the humour in a situation comedy. How an individual viewer will decode texts and humorous situations considering their cultural capital and gender is of utmost importance. I found out that class and gender distinctions are, in fact, significant to both the viewers and the characters in the selected situation comedies. The role of both is of great significance in reception and it influences the preferences in choosing television contents and the ways of decoding. This is because viewers with lower cultural capital think that the contents is what is only important, while viewers with higher cultural capital focus also on production of the contents, sound and video effects, characteristics of the characters and correlation between them.
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