Early Grange Hill

[Quincey]

Started watching this. Much tamer than I expected it to be and surprised by how middle class a lot of the kids are. The highlight so far is Bullet Baxter. I remember watching Series 19-23 as a kid (Anika, Martin, Josh etc). Towards the end of Grange Hill it became aimed at much younger children and became really shite.

[Replies From View]

That's about the worst Grange Hill opening gambit I have ever heard in my entire life.

[non capisco]

My main memory is Zammo's drugs falling and going on the floor and him desperately trying to cram them all in his mouth, leading me to think that you ate heroin.

Also Ro-Land having enough of being bullied and sacking off school, sitting in his house with a load of crisps and watching 'Camberwick Green'.

For a long period of my life I have been walking about with virtually the same hairstyle as Gripper Stebson, trying to fool myself that I looked like James Dean or Chet Baker. And not even with the casual venomous authority of the bully that Gripper commanded. Just an anxious tit with a quiff.

[non capisco]

Similar to the Eastenders 'Gutbuster' bollocks that I've posted about on here a wearying amount before, me and a mate both had a false memory of an episode of Grange Hill ending with rasta character Glenroy painfully screaming to the heavens "IT'S BEEN SABOTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGED, MON!!!!!!!!!!!", his face a chilling rictus mask of hurt and anger, after some bit of artwork he's done has been ruined by Gripper. Found the episode, turns out he just mildly goes "It's been sabotaged" and it's not even the "widdip-wop-wowwww" moment at the end. YouTube really is a double edged sword when it comes to nostalgia.

[Ptolemy Ptarmigan]

Much tamer than I expected it to be and surprised by how middle class a lot of the kids are.

Anyone would think it was a comprehensive school.

[Replies From View]

My main memory is Zammo's drugs falling and going on the floor and him desperately trying to cram them all in his mouth, leading me to think that you ate heroin.

One of most pervading memories was the image of Zammo on the floor as the camera zoomed in further and further.

"He's dead from drugs," was my deduction.


Then he was back next week.

[Glebe]

Anyone would think it was a comprehensive school.

That flying banger symbolizes early '80s British TV in all it's glory.

[Replies From View]

A lot of people reckon the black kid can't possibly have been in the original titles and that the the PC nostalgia brigade must have meddled with it afterwards.

[Glebe]

A lot of people reckon the black kid can't possibly have been in the original titles and that the the PC nostalgia brigade must have meddled with it afterwards.

It's the Mandela Effect again. Just as the Black & White Minstrels where taken off air, a Robertson's golly snuck in under the radar.

[Replies From View]

[Replies From View]

a Robertson's golly snuck in under the radar.

In my memory it was a sausage on a fork flying quite visibly over everyone's heads.

[Glebe]

In my memory it was a sausage on a fork flying quite visibly over everyone's heads.

Mandela Effect, mate. Mandela Effect.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Anyone would think it was a comprehensive school.

Except someone's throwing a sausage at teenage Michael Jackson, so it must be a really exclusive private school.

That attention-seeking twat on the bottom left breaking the fourth wall by smirking at the viewers.

[biggytitbo]

Grange Hill on the spectrum is the best Grange Hill game.

[BlodwynPig]

There have been a number of "ghost" episodes. The only one on youtube is the wrong one. Apologies for repeating myself again but one of the most terrifying programmes of the 80s (after Bergerac's Fire in the Fall) was an episode of GH where the kids decide to break into the school at night to (I think) look for a ghost. They end up in a box room and are scared half to death by a noise. They scarper through a window, but what stuck with me for a long time was this. As the camera pans from right to left (towards the fleeing children and the window) it passes a pile of boxes, and just as they go out of shot I saw one of the boxes start to levitate. It was only an instant but I did not sleep for nights and stopped watching GH for a good 2 or 3 years.

[BlodwynPig]

Oh, and remember that "otherworldliness" of 80s programming - stuff like Dark Towers with the slightly distorted sound and sparse acoustics coupled with dim colouring. It had that. I also had this ringing sound in my head, like a fever hallucination. Unsettling.

[Quincey]

Anyone would think it was a comprehensive school.

Do most comps have 60% middle class kids with plummy RADA accents?

"My names Suzie Sutton, what's your name?"

"Terry Bicycle-Acrobat".

[Quincey]

Tucker Jenkins is a complete twat isn't he? The kid Benny Green has some redeeming features of character though.

All those who went to comps in the 1980's/1990's - how realistic was Grange Hill?

[Phoenix Lazarus]

quote author=Quincey link=topic=60022.msg3127218#msg3127218 date=1494318635]
All those who went to comps in the 1980's/1990's - how realistic was Grange Hill?

End of this sums it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSGylGsZpcE

[Replies From View]

Tucker Jenkins is a complete twat isn't he? The kid Benny Green has some redeeming features of character though.

All those who went to comps in the 1980's/1990's - how realistic was Grange Hill?

Apart from the accents (in my secondary school, in Larkhall in Bath, everyone spoke like worzels), quite accurate I thought.

[phes]

Aneurysm retrieving a ring from the bottom of the pool? Something along those lines?

1985: someone died

[Bad Ambassador]

All those who went to comps in the 1980's/1990's - how realistic was Grange Hill?

Reasonably.

[Replies From View]

Aneurysm retrieving a ring from the bottom of the pool? Something along those lines?

1985: someone died

To my younger self, he died "of being at the bottom of a pool".

And that's what I'm insisting he died of to this very day.

[Sebastian Cobb]

End of this sums it up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSGylGsZpcE

Is that a very young/thin Perry "Bones" Benson?

[gib]

Is that a very young/thin Perry "Bones" Benson?

Brilliant Grange Hill spoof featured in The Young Ones episode 'Sick' with the kids played by Ben Elton and Perry Benson (Clive from Benidorm)

[Brundle-Fly]

Everybody remembers Gripper Stebson as the 'Hugo Drax' of Grange Hill, but before him was the unhinged Booger Benson. He was the show's  'Scaramanga' (or Ska-ramanga judging by his garb).

This is well directed and quite gripping and violent for a children's show. This is exactly my era of going to secondary school. I started my first year in 1977, a year before GH started. My comp had a few psychos like Benson. It was pretty realistic on the whole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNtnxSCQOn4

[shiftwork2]

I don't think I've seen any of this since it was broadcast.  It was a must-watch programme at the time as we contemplated leaving our gentle primary school for the real world.  I remember it as a heady slice of rock-hard.  If it was actually Italia Conti kids finding something to be in before Emu's Pink Windmill took off then maybe I should leave it be.  I really don't remember it that way though.

There was an 'issuesy' show called The Great Grange Hill Debate shown quite early on which indicates there was some notoriety surrounding Grange Hill's early days.

[Jockice]

Tucker Jenkins is a complete twat isn't he? The kid Benny Green has some redeeming features of character though.

All those who went to comps in the 1980's/1990's - how realistic was Grange Hill?

I was in the first year at secondary school when Grange Hill started in 1978, so Tucker etc would have been contemporaries of mine. Although mine was a comprehensive it was different to Grange Hill in that it had previously been an all-girls Catholic grammar school until the year before I started, so there were loads of nuns teaching and some of the other teachers were obviously just not used to a male presence.

It had its similarities though. And of course it gave some of our pupils ideas. There was an early plot about a school rebellion which was symbolised by GH kids wearing their blazers inside out.  Of course some of our lot started doing it the next day, but it was of course crushed by the nuns. Nuns are the most violent people on earth.

[purlieu]

I'm from the 'MIDI piano theme' era of the show, and this all seems very rough around the edges in comparison. Everything about the school in the '90s was completely sterile and bland.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Grange Hill's original theme tune was interesting. Part deep-bass notes on an electronic organ; part trumpet; & that bit that sounded like someone like someone scraping two blades together or something, which always gave the tune a rather individual feel.