‘Audiences told us we didn’t show enough teacher sex’: how we made Waterloo Road

Lockdown hit … Angela Griffin, centre, as head teacher Kim Campbell in BBC drama Waterloo Road. Photograph: Kate Bones/BBC

Cameron Roach, executive producer

I was working on women’s prison drama Bad Girls when the idea for Waterloo Road came up. Bad Girls creators Maureen Chadwick and Ann McManus had a fiery belief in social justice and did rigorous research. Those are often the foundations of successful serial drama. Ann had once taught in a Glasgow comprehensive and was passionate about education: she believed we write off young people too readily. That became the basis of Waterloo Road.