rude ill mannered children

"Rude, Ill-Mannered Children"

That was how my father used to describe the characters on Grange Hill,

now to be axed. And he was right, of course. The BBC wants to know

people's memories of Grange Hill. Mine is of the programme, along with

others aimed at the same age group, that set the agenda now followed

by the soaps, not only in making teenagers the main characters

(increasingly the case on Coronation Street), but also in depicting

extreme violence and sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, gangsterism, and

daily screeching matches as the mainstays of ordinary life in general

and ordinary working-class life in particular.

EastEnders, above all, is now set in the Sixties, with Krayalikes, Mrs

Mops, few or no Asians, few or no black characters except first

generation immigrants with West Indian accents, everyone using the

launderette, and (as in all the soaps) a quite extraordinary amount of

time spent in the pub. Still, we should be pleased that these really

are proper pubs, even if Coronation Street does depict an entire

factory-full of machinists having a big, boozy lunch in one every day

before heading back to work for the afternoon.

We all know about the actors, but someone should also look into how

many writers and production staff from teenage drama series have gone