Television: British soaps can be hit or miss for Irish audiences but growing up is an ordeal everywhere
dramas that portray school and adolescence as twin hellscapes from which there is no escape. It’s a lineage that goes back to the early 1980s and Grange Hill, where plot lines invariably revolved around someone having their head shoved down the loo/being expelled for glue sniffing.
The big talking point going into the latest season of a show around in various incarnations since 2006 is comedian Jason Manford’s addition to the cast. He plays the careerist new principal Steve Savage – here referred to as a ‘head teacher’ – at Waterloo Road, which has now been upgraded to an “academy” .
There are plenty of pressures facing the students, too. One girl is receiving bullying texts from an anonymous troll – who turns out to be closer to home than she thought. Other pupils get involved in an altercation in the yard – an outbreak of violence that exists purely to demonstrate the floundering incompetence of poor, flailing Joe.
British soaps can be hit or miss for Irish audiences. There’s obviously a lot of shared cultural connectivity – but not always as much as you might think, and these shows sometimes bounce off viewers here. Moreover, the UK education system is very different from the Irish equivalent.
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