Grange Hill is a British television drama series originally made by the BBC. The show began in 1978 on BBC1 and was one of the longest running programmes on British television. 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 most important person on the team was producer and director Richard Callanan. He was chief director/producer for the whole 30 years.

On 6 February 2008, it was announced that Grange Hill would be cancelled after 30 years and the last episode was shown on 15 September 2008.

The drama was centred on the fictional comprehensive school of Grange Hill in the (equally fictitious) borough of North London called “Northam” (although when filming moved to Liverpool in 2003, it ceased to have any specific location), and follows the lives of the students as they progress through school. The series was to have originally 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).

Review donated by Carl Smith.

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