Case Study: Grange Hill

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

The British television drama series, Grange Hill, was originally produced by the successful BBC. The show began being premiered in 1978 on BBC1 and was announced one of the longest running programmes on British television when it finally ended in 2008. It was created by Phil Redmond, who is actually responsible for Channel 4 dramas Brookside and Hollyoaks, and he worked alongside other notable production team members throughout the years. Including produced Colin Cant and script editor Anthony Minghella. After a long 30 years the show was finally cancelled and the last episode was aired on 15^th September 2008.

The series was centred on the fictional school which included and dealt with secondary education with children of all abilities from a particular area. When the drama was being filed it moved to Liverpool from North London in 2003 and ceased to have any specific location after that. Initially, the series was called “Grange Park” which would go on to be used as the name of the school in another Redmond creation, the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside (1982-2003).

Grange Hill was originally conceived by ATV comedy writer Phil Redmond, whose first approach was to try and sell the drama to various television companies but was unsuccessful on many occasions. Finally in 1976, he managed to sell the idea to the BBC and the children’s drama executive, Anna Home. She decided to give the series a trail run on nine episodes, the first being broadcasted on 8^th February 1978.

Since the first episode of Grange Hill it has caused much controversy for its real life, gritty portrayal of school life which people believed differed from the idealised portrayals of earlier school dramas. This lead to Redmond not being able to push the boundaries until later on in the series.  However, he was later forced to tone things down by the BBC otherwise no more episodes would be aired.

Grange Hill’s highest profile period was during the mid-late 1980’s where one of the most famous and talked about storylines was that of Zammo McGuire and his heroin addiction. This storyline ran over 2 series (1986-87) and focused on Zammo’s descent into drugs and how this put a major strain of his relationship with fellow characters Jackie and also his friend Kevin. Throughout this storyline other favourite characters were shown. Later on, the script editor Anthony Minghella worked on a series for several years (during the 1980’s) which focused on Gonch and his attempt at money making schemes, which were very unsuccessful, this managed to show the drama having an element of comedy involved.

Throughout the 1990’s, Grange Hill unfortunately did not get as much media attention as it did just a few years back. The teachers were not equal in the narrative with their personal lives taking up almost as much time as those of the pupils. But in 1994, new disabled characters were introduced (Denny Roberts who suffered with dwarfism and Rachael Burns who suffered with cerebral palsy). Both of these were presented as being one of the gang and hated any special treatment they got due to their circumstances.

To celebrate the dramas 15^th anniversary the first ever 15 episodes were repeated during CBBC’s Sunday and during later Saturday slots on BBC1 and BBC2, these repeats ended with series 16 in 1999.

By 2001, the series was mainly issue led and the decision to try and tackle the issue of rape upset a lot of their audience. When Redmond took over production in 2003 he hoped to get the show back on track therefore he toned down the issues and focused the episodes more at the younger generation. In 2006 it was announced that a film of Grange Hill was going to be produced and released in 2007 focusing on the lives of the former pupils of the fictional school. This has still not yet happened.

 “For the first 25 years Grange Hill was produced in-house by the BBC, then the show was made independently for the corporation by Mersey TV, the production house founded by Redmond (and later renamed as Lime Pictures), hence the production move.”

The issues covered:

Very controversial

• Students throwing benches into the swimming pool this lead to letters of complaints from teachers and parents
• Rape, heroin addiction, Asperger’s syndrome, knife crime and attempted suicide this lead to complaint and upset from a numerous amount of viewers
• Introduced a gay teacher
• Introduced a deaf character

In 2008, Grange Hill cut back on the hard-hitting issues and concentrated more on the early years of secondary school

• The final series: lighter aspects but still dealt with some social issues such as a Year 6 pupil battling with dyslexia whilst it turned out the school bully, Chloe Moore, had to care for her disabled mother.

The original theme music used throughout the years of 1978 and 1989 returned for the final series in 2008, this track was named “Chicken Man” by Alan Hawkshaw. Grange Hill was the first programme to use it as their theme tune. Despite it already being played on Grange Hill, ‘Give Us A Clue’ decided to use the same track but a less dymanic arrangement and keeping it more with the style of the light entertainment programming.

From 1990 a new and more present sounding theme (written directly for the series by Peter Moss) was used. Prior to this he had already written a special track for a storyline in Series 11 for Grange Hill. His latest theme music lasted until 2007 even though it became unpopular, this may have been because the drama’s opening sequence was continuously getting shorter therefore less and less of the tune was heard. The final version was no longer than 12 seconds.  

The last four notes of the initial theme tune song were heard when Brookside, on of Redmond’s other TV series, aired its final episode in 2003.