Were the episodes of Grange Hill from the 1980s the best?

I might as well be listing figures from my own childhood and, in a sense, I am, though I never met any of them. For all of the above were pupils at the fictional comprehensive school, Grange Hill. The popular BBC children’s drama started 45 years ago in February 1978 and ran until 2008. Perhaps I am biased, but I tend to think its finest years were in the 1980s, ie during my own childhood.

Though I have seen them since, I was too young to have watched the very first episodes of Grange Hill when they were first broadcast. The original title sequence was memorable, presenting the series as if it was a story in a comic, depicting various pupils (none of them ever characters in the series) enduring typical scenes from school life: a girl missing the school bus, a swimming lesson, a stray sausage starting a food fight in the canteen and a boy (somewhat ironically) getting a comic confiscated in class. The original theme music, Chicken Man by Alan Hawkshaw, was also used for Give Us A Clue between 1979 and 1982.

Creator Phil Redmond had first come up with the idea for a school-based drama originally to be called Grange Park while standing in a Liverpool dole queue in the mid-1970s. He later changed the name to Grange Hill, not realising this was already the name of a minor London tube station. A key innovation was to film much of the action at a child’s eye level. The series was immediately popular but also controversial. Comprehensive schools were still a relatively new thing in 1978 and many parents were shocked to see bullying and racism portrayed openly on screen. Many complaints centred on the use of bad language. This is odd really as with the exception of one episode where microphones accidentally picked up someone swearing in the background, the language used was rarely stronger than “flipping heck”. This was, in fact, one area of the series which was consistently unrealistic.

By the time I started watching in about 1982, many of the original cast such as Peter ‘Tucker’ Jenkins and Benny Green (Todd Carty and the late Terry Sue-Patt) were on the verge of leaving. Tucker was a popular character and Carty returned to play the character in the spin-off series, Tucker’s Luck (1983-85). Carty is now probably more famous for his long stint as Mark Fowler in EastEnders. Many other ex-Grange Hill alumni including Susan Tully, Luisa Bradshaw-White, Michelle Gayle and Sean Maguire also moved on to the adult London-based soap, the last two enjoying successful pop music careers.

Grange Hill enjoyed a number of memorable storylines in the 1980s. Some were arguably silly and unrealistic: the introduction of a school donkey and a special Grange Hill radio station spring to mind. Others were more shocking and hard-hitting, such as the sudden death of pupil Danny Kendall (Jonathan Lambeth) after he stole be-wigged teacher, Mr Bronson’s (Michael Sheard) car. No Grange Hill storyline ever received as much attention as the heroin addiction of Zammo Maguire (Lee MacDonald) in 1986 and 1987, however. It led to the release of a pop single “Just Say No” and a wider anti-drugs campaign.

By the 21st century, Grange Hill was showing signs of going into decline. In 2002 creator Phil Redmond moved the show’s setting from London to Liverpool. In time Redmond, who had subsequently created Brookside and Hollyoaks, grew unhappy with the BBC’s plans for the series. Grange Hill was cancelled in 2008, but its enduring impact has continued to resonate long after the final bell rang.