Grange Hill

Grange Hill never fails to entertain me. It has been running for many years but each year it just gets better! Well Done BBC!! Another great show from the BBC is Byker Grove which is set in Newcastle. Its truly great and is better for 13+ than younger kids while shows such as UBOS is definitely not for teens. Grange Hill always brings in great new characters each school year but some also leave as they reach sixth form. I have seen many great characters go but the BBC make up for this b bringing in some more fantastic people. However i feel Mersey Televiion have let us down this year as they have brought in some really poor actors and its not good watching!

I've recently been rewatching the glory years, Mid 80's to early 90's, and its just been sublime. So many memories of my school years have been flooding back in for me. Gonch and Cleaver, Mr Bronson, Jackie and Zammo, Ronnie and Callie. All were wonderful characters. (Well they were to the teenage me!) Its just amazing how intricate and hard hitting some of the GH plotlines were. And of course just how much fun the show was to watch. My all time favourites were Ziggy and Robbie and, especially, Georgina Hayes. I had a massive crush on her at the time, or i should say Samantha Lewis. They have been releasing the DVDs of the early early years but i ireally hope they get around to releasing the best years on DVD. I have to watch on terrible MP4 copies but they are better than nothing. Such a shame they cancelled it. The kids of today dont know what they are missing.

Perhaps its heyday is now in the past, but "Grange Hill" was long one of the most arresting and high quality soap operas on television. There was a fantastic mix of actors and actresses, and writing that confronted some of the major issues that teenagers have to deal with, but mostly without preaching and irresponsibility. I have to say that I view this approach as mostly being down to one man - Phil Redmond. (Surprise surprise, NOT Anthony Minghella!!) I rarely, if ever, watch "Brookside" or "Hollyoaks", but even these, his other two notable creations, display a similar innovative style. Top marks to the man who injected a bit of 'risk into 'youth culture' T.V!

"Grange Hill" is now an institution, spawning many talented performers (and some not so... !) in its long running tenure. As far as I know, it's still going today as well! This is a series that speaks to young people as being the future of our society, not the curse of it. For that it should be applauded. Well done to the producers for maintaining such high quality standards.

As an afterthought, why do my favourite characters never appear in a list of anybody else's favourites? I chiefly remember Justine and Georgina, and that probably has a lot to do with my sex, age and sexual orientation... !

I remember watching the very first episode of Grange Hill, when Tucker Jenkins the-soon-to-be star of the series, went to meet his friend Benny Green before their first day at school. That was in 1978. I soon became hooked on the series, like most of my age group back then, and was grateful that it was shown twice a week, which was-and still is-unusual for TV drama. Through subsequant episodes, we followed the exploits of the many characters who passed through the school's gates. And, we also could relate to the many problems that the characters experienced, as most of us at some time or other, had been subjected to bullying, peer pressure, the problems of divorce, and even drug abuse.

The BBC had to endure the scourge of many complaints from parents and various groups. And they also had the likes of people such as Mary Whitehouse, critisising them for corrupting Britain's youth. I remember that the BBC once screened a special debate programme called Speaking Out, in which actors from the series, and real pupils and teachers from schools discussed the issues sometimes covered in Grange Hill. At the time, there was a major fuss because a female character in the series, played by Paula Ann Bland, wanted to go on the pill. Shock Horror!!

Well, it was a primative time 1982 y'know.

I regard the classic period of Grange Hill to be somewhere between 1979 to 1989, and since then, I have stopped watching.

The BBC in my opinion have totally lost the plot over the last few years, cancelling such classic TV shows like Grange Hill, Byker Grove, TOTP and even losing Neighbours to Channel 5 (although I wasn't a great fan of Neighbours though, so I was glad to see that one go!).

The director general of the BBC should be sacked for the mess he's made over the past few years of what was regarded as such a high class institution, but has now gone right down in society, with the best new rubbish they can come up with is idiots like Jonathan Ross. I bet most of these top shows were axed just so they could pay this idiots wages (and then look what he does). I certainly don't agree that the BBC should have just suspended Rossy, they should have fired him, if the BBC had fired him the only job he would have got after his lewd comments would have been doing stand-up in front of a private audience as no other company would take the risk to re-employ him.

The BBC need to stop and look at the mess they are making and to bring back shows such as Grange Hill which helped school children understand various things in school life. I only wish that they had covered Asperger's on Grange Hill a little earlier as I went through school with Asperger's and ADHD and most of the kids around me didn't understand me at all. Where as now thanks to Grange Hill covering this it seems that quite a lot of young people are fully aware of Asperger's and show some understanding towards the problems faced.