Seasons one to three of Ackley Bridge (Channel 4) were an ideal lockdown box set for families with teens or tweens. Set in a Yorkshire academy school created by merging a predominantly white secondary with a predominantly Muslim one, the drama never lost sight of its core mission to examine multiculturalism as experienced by teens and educators.
But it did widen out into an accessible panorama of life in post-austerity Britain that was juiced with soapy storylines – the head teacher cheating on her PE teacher husband with the unduly influential “sponsor”, who was bankrolling the academy; the tearaway girl hiding the truth about her home life from school staff and social workers. Undercut with sly comedy, it was a perfect school saga, deftly juggling domestic and institutional issues, teaching kids how adults think, and vice versa.
