When Grange Hill first aired in 1978, it was groundbreaking in the way it covered the reality of teenagers’ lives, from heroin addiction to HIV/Aids and knife crime. Now, 15 years after it was axed, the BBC is returning to school dramas to attract teenage audiences, with a new series described as “Grange Hill meets The Breakfast Club”.
Phoenix Rise charts six pupils previously excluded from school who start back in mainstream education through a pupil referral unit. Its writers hope to portray young lives with the same accuracy that Grange Hill did over the course of its 31 series.
Set in Coventry, whose city emblem is a phoenix, the 10-part BBC Studios series tackles issues ranging from bullying and mental ill health to period poverty – depicting a girl who cannot afford sanitary products starting her period while wearing white PE shorts.
The show’s creators, Perrie Balthazar and Matt Evans, said they were “quite surprised” that the bloodstains could be shown, “because of the parameters of this kind of programming”. But the BBC supported them in breaking boundaries, said Evans, and even “pushed us to go further”.
The writers were inspired by Grange Hill as children, and Evans wrote seven episodes that aired between 2003 and 2005, working under the show’s creator, Phil Redmond.
Balthazar, who is mixed race, said she loved Grange Hill as “it reflected the people I knew and grew up with” on her council estate in the Midlands. “[It] was the only place probably that I saw kids like me, my cousins and my friends on TV … since then I haven’t seen that across children’s TV.”
She said when working-class characters were depicted on British TV, “there tends to be gun crime, violence, everything’s very sinister, or it turns into some kind of poverty porn where everybody’s very heroic”.
Evans, who is also from the Midlands, said they wanted to portray “authentic working-class stories”. Which is why he and Balthazar – who between them have worked on hits including A Discovery of Witches, Ackley Bridge, Bad Sisters, EastEnders and Coronation Street – were adamant that the working-class estate that is home to the abandoned brother and sister Billy and Rhiannon be filled with “joy and colour”.
Showing the resilience and strength of the six main characters was important, said Balthazar, as “these kids are facing huge challenges”, as are many teenagers post-Covid.
“I think they always have done but it’s much much worse than it has been,” she said. “But these kids manage to have a laugh, fall in love, have crushes, get obsessed with a new jacket they want and can’t have – those universal teen experiences … hormonal things and finding your way in the world.”
She said it was important to show “the authenticity of those kinds of kids on screen” and that was reflected in the casting of non-stage-school children from Coventry, found through casting calls and via youth clubs and TikTok.
Evans said the pair wanted to show how school could be a sanctuary. “For some kids [it’s] the place where someone asks how they are or they get a decent meal and they see their friends and can maybe escape what’s happening at home.”
He said they made the headteacher, Jamie, an inspirational black man as, “having talked to people who run referral units, it often takes one teacher who’s got the time to dedicate to a troubled kid to turn around the fortunes of that kid. The trouble is that teachers are overstretched and under-resourced.”
Evans said they both loved 1980s high school films such as The Breakfast Club. The six main characters at Phoenix Rise school meet in the school’s disused boiler room to discuss their challenges, and show that “if you’ve got the right friends … you can pretty much get through anything”.
With original music from unsigned Coventry bands, showing texts on screen, and storylines about the pupils not the teachers, Balthazar said she hopes Phoenix Rise would resonate with teens. “We’re trying to show them in a positive light and show their resilience, strength and empathy; they care a lot about the world and each other – that’s something to be celebrated.”
Phoenix Rise will air on BBC iPlayer from 21 March and on BBC Three.
