Grange Hill

Grange Hill is a British children's television drama series, originally produced by the BBC and portraying life in a typical comprehensive school. The show began its run on 8 February 1978 on BBC1, and was one of the longest-running programmes on British television when it ended on 15 September 2008 after 31 series. It was created by Phil Redmond, who is also responsible for the Channel 4 dramas Brookside and Hollyoaks; other notable production team members down the years have included producer Colin Cant and script editor Anthony Minghella. The show was cancelled in 2008, having run every year for 30 years. It was felt by the BBC that the series had run its course. Overview The drama was centred on the fictional comprehensive school of Grange Hill in the equally fictitious North London borough of Northam. As well as dealing with school-related issues such as bullying, learning difficulties, teacher-pupil relationships and conflicts, Grange Hill "broke new ground over the years, with the kind of hard-hitting storylines not usually seen in children's dramas", such as racism, drugs (e.g. Zammo McGuire's heroin addiction, LSD), teenage pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, knife crime, homelessness, rape/sexual assault, mental illness (e.g. bipolar disorder), divorce, cancer (e.g. leukaemia), gun crime, child abuse, alcoholism and death. The series was originally to have been 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).