Case Study: Byker Grove

Referenced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byker_Grove

Byker Grove is a British television series which was broadcasted between the years of 1989 and 2006. It was broadcasted at 5:10pm but later moved to the time of 5pm on CBBC and BBC One and had a running time of 25 minutes. The dramas target audience was older teenagers/ young adults due to the serious and controversial storylines.

The main setting was a youth club, and it was rare that that the children were shown in school, in Byker district of Newcastle upon Tyne. The programme was the original idea of the TV executive Andrea Wonfor. In 1987, she approached the soap writer Adele Rose and by working in partnership they created a single pilot episode featuring children aged between 8 and 11 at an out of school club. From their hard work they gained the approval of the Head of the Children’s Department at BBC Television, Anna Home. Again, like Grange Hill, she decided to give Byker Grove a trail run of six 25 minute episodes which was broadcasted by the BBC. After support from the first producer-director, Matthew Robinson, the age of the main character was increased from 12 to 16 therefor the programme targeted at young teenagers crossing the bridge from childhood to adulthood.  

Anthony McPartlin (“P.J”), now commonly known as Ant, and Declan Donnelly (“Duncan”), now commonly known as Dec, found there fame and career from being popular characters in Byker Grove. It also featured actors like Jill Halfpenny, Donna Air, Andrew Hayden-Smith and Emmerdale stars such as Dale Meeks, Charlie Hardwick, Chelsea Halfpenny, Laura Norton and finally Victoria Hawkins.

The first writer was Adele Rose – in series 1 she wrote episodes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 with her daughter Carrie Rose writing episode 5. The most prolific writer was Brian B.Thompson who wrote 50 episodes over 12 series. Furthermore, Tom Hooper directed four episodes of the show in 1997 and Charlie Hunman now stars in American TV series Sons of Anarchy.

The actual youth club where filming took place was in Benwell, this was known as The Mitre which used to be a nightclub and a pub before it was bought by Zenith Television, who film the drama. In the build up to the final episode of Byker Grove, on 7^th October 2006, Richard Deverell (hea dof CBBC) was interviewed on Newsround about the decisions to axe the series. Tim Holloway produced the eughteenth and last series of Byker Grove and he then went onto produce Casualty until 2002. In 2008 it was rumoured Gallowgate Productions,  a production company owned by Any McPartlin and Dec Donnelly, purchased the rights to Byker Grove after the prouction company made it into liquidation in 2007. This has never be confirmed nor denied by the duo.   

Throughout the series Byker Grove tackled some controversial issues such as:

• Drug addiction
• Child abuse
• Homelessness
• Teen pregancy
• Abortion

In fact, Byker Grove was the first Britith drama to attempt to tackle the subject of homosexulaity when Noddy Fishwick kissed his close friend Gary Hendrix. This scene caused major outrage, for example the Sun Newspaper editior called for the producer to be sacked. However, the drama stuck with the storyline and ended up getting countrywide suuport for all homosexual people and their parents. Another storyline tacjling homosexuality is that when Bradley agonised over his sexuality and eventually coming out as being gay to his girlfriend, Sadie. Furthermore the series frequently ruined the lives of many chararcters by the bad things happening to the good people, such as Flora dying from an unfortunate brain tumour, Greg falling from the roof of the Grove leaving him paralysed from the waist down and the youth leader’s death in an accidental gas explosion.