Grange Hill

Personally i think that kids programmes featuring schools and ridiculous. They are NOTHING like the real thing, i left school last year and this programme is just one huge laugh.

Its only a couple of years ago that Grange Hill was home to 'The Double Dare gang', i mean come on! How many teenagers that you know would join the 'Double Dare Gang'

All of the teachers have changed, and some of the almost real characters have left, while the writers keep coming up with excuses to keep older pupils within the school.

Finish this show and make something realistic!

Rick

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.

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.

When you were a teenager, it always felt as if the world was against you. No matter what you did, how much you tried to impress people - there was always something wrong, someone to put you in your place.

That is the brilliance of Grange Hill - it depicts British school life excellently: the everyday hum-drum of moving from one lesson to the other; the mind-numbing, soul-crushing hell hole that you have to attend every day for five years; the peer pressure and the bullying and most of all, realising that this is your life and it's never going to change. (And no, I didn't like school much!)

When you were at school, there was always kids whose parents were getting divorced, gay, on drugs, seriously depressed, victim of abuse or pregnant. Grange Hill doesn't just present the problem, it explores how that problem came about, the effect on that character and most of all the reaction of their peers when it all comes out (which it always does). There is always something compulsive about watching on the tele what you know to be happening all around you, what happens to your closest friend or worst enemy - because it's real.

Compulsive viewing for any one who is/was a teenager.

I have been watching Grange Hill since the early 1980's and still watch it to this day, even though I have long left school.

This drama is better than some of the rubbish which is on TV in the evenings at prime time. A lot of the time all there is on are repeats of detective shows or cheap to make 'fly on the wall' documentaries.

The young actors and actresses take good parts and a lot have moved on to become well known and star in soaps like EastEnders. Some quite well known faces have played the teachers too such as Anna Quayle (Mrs Munroe) who was in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.