Stircrazy PostPosted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:37 pm

I laughed my arse off when I saw this brief entry in the Diary section of the Education supplement published with yesterday's Indy:

The television sophisticates who brought us Footballers' Wives and Bad Girls, those two rousing hymns to femininity, have come up with another prime-time drama blockbuster, this time set in a failing Northern comprehensive school called, like the show itself, Waterloo Road. As you might expect, Waterloo Road comes burdened with its fair share of sex and violence, in the form of a nymphomaniacal French mistress (played by the former Coronation Street actress, Denise Welch) sinking her polished nails into the new headmaster and a pair of rebellious teens who find themselves at the centre of a joyriding tragedy. Among the staff is new recruit Andrew Treneman (Jamie Glover), an Oxbridge graduate and ex-public school teacher, who tries to inspire the disruptive pupils with his high-end educational enthusiasm. Good luck to him. Waterloo Road starts on BBC1 next Thursday evening at 8pm.

* Obviously closer to the unadulterated crap that is Footballers' Wives - & virtually every single episode of all the series which followed, Series 4 in particular... Rolling Eyes (OK, maybe there were flashes of the old BG in Series 3, but nowhere near enough to make it an unqualified success!) - than to the first series - & parts of the second - of BG Rolling Eyes , but I may just deign to give the first episode or two the onceover, if only to find out whether Denise Welch's character is required to be seen actually teaching a French lesson &, if so, to cast my expert eye over it to hear what kind of a hash she makes of it! Wink

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mandanamad PostPosted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 10:04 am

starts 2night
hi ya im looking forward 2 seeing it it starts 2night at 8pm not sure wich channle tho it sound good.

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Simone_Rocks PostPosted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:21 am

IT WAS AWESOME! ahhh i thought it was great! lol at thet whole "i love you izzy" thing aww poor lorna..donte and chlo with the broken bottle.. what can ya say..kinda like the whole mad tessa thing when her and shell became "blood sisters" on the muppet wing..all in all a good firts episode..cant wait to see more

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notsuchabadgirl PostPosted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:19 pm

Brill wasn't it?

so nice to have something worth watching on peaktime tv.

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filbertfox PostPosted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:16 pm

I love Waterloo Road...had the advantage of watching the first episode a few days before it aired and then sent a load of texts out to people urging them to watch it...

It raises a number of important issues about education in this country, and stars Jill Halfpenny to boot...fab!

Have to say, I think Denise's character is hilarious...

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mandanamad PostPosted: Fri Mar 10, 2006 5:29 pm

i also thouraly enjoyed it can't wait till next week

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Stircrazy PostPosted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:29 pm

From Roland White's review of last week's TV offerings in the Culture section of last weekend's Sunday Times:

"Waterloo Road (Thursday, BBC1) is a promising drama about a sink school. Unfortunately, it has had the dramatic mat pulled from under its feet in a cruel schoolboy prank. The only real plot line about a sink school is whether it can be rescued. The headmaster at Waterloo Road, who looks as if he’d be happier as a detective constable in Life on Mars, says that the only thing his pupils leave school with is an Asbo or a bun in the oven. So can he turn it round, with the aid of an ambitious new deputy? Well, we know the answer because we watched Julie Walters, last year, in Ahead of the Class, an ITV drama based on a real-life case. What we’re left with here is a love triangle between teachers, a promising story line about a single dad and his feckless son, but not much more.

Somehow, though, the drama delivers more than the sum of its parts. This is because it’s well written and well produced. By the end of episode one, we have a set of well-developed characters that we care about, and the prospect of tensions to come — no mean feat from an opening episode. Also, the series stoutly resists the temptation to go for cheap laughs."

Having finally managed to watch a tape of the programme (I had a far more pressing European football match to watch live! Wink ), I'm inclined to agree with Mr White, or at least prepared to give it a second crack of the whip tomorrow. I found that reference to its being well written telling, though, as I believe the script for the first episode was in the capable hands of Maureen Chadwick & Ann McManus. It would appear, therefore, that it's taken a switch from ITV to the Beeb to bring about a significant improvement in the quality of Shed's output. Assuming, however, that the first series is sufficiently successful to warrant the commissioning of a follow-up, what price its sliding rapidly downhill à la BG because they've moved on to a new, more interesting (challenging?), project? Rolling Eyes

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red318 PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 1:15 am

filbertfox wrote:
...stars Jill Halfpenny to boot...fab!


I must make a note to see it when it finally makes its way to Australia then Very Happy

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filbertfox PostPosted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:18 am

Those who enjoyed Waterloo Road will be pleased to know that the BBC have commissioned a 12-part second series.

You can read more about this at...

http://www.shedproductions.com

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stunning_simone PostPosted: Mon May 01, 2006 7:53 pm

i love waterloo road but i had a hangover the other day and i set my alarm so i could get up 2 watch the last one and slept right through it i just shouldn't have went to sleep
arhhhhhhhhh

OK, so we have this other Waterloo Rd thread on the board, but I don't want to spoil any of our NZ friends, so I am posting here about having seen the S1 finale, and I have to say, I thought the show was excellent overall. Great characters, great moral quandaries, no idealized saints (except maybe Kim--I wish she had shown more backbone in the whole sexual assault situation, while it was happening and then again at the hearing). I never took to Lorna, although I did feel a bit of a twinge at the thought of her topping herself. But brilliant work on the Tom-Izzy romance, to keep it from being a cliched star-crossed adulturous affair, by showing Tom be so weak and wishy-washy, and Izzy so ready to not have it if it meant doing the right thing by Lorna.

I also thought all of the teenage actors were great, esp. the actress who played Chloe and the one who played the dumb girl who liked dinosaurs (can't remember her name). And nice twist at the end, with Donte and Chloe getting off with just the weight of their conscience as punishment--very very Shed, throwing in a bit of anti-prison message. OH, AND, as I was lamenting the lack of gay topics, they had the great episode about homophobic bullying, which I thought was handled quite well. Perhaps a teenaged gay boy wouldn't be so strong and self-reliant, but it still managed to bring an important issue to the fore, and was just on the right side of the preachy-not preachy line.

Oooh I am so happy about a second series of Waterloo Road..........

12 hours of Jill Halfpenny........... :wub:



(OMG I actually found the courage to post!!)

Yay! Good for you. :-) And I couldn't agree more about Jill Halfpenny.

I've been thinking a bit more about the finale, and its very interesting the way they juxtaposed Donte's trial in the official justice system with Kim's "trial" in the school system's disciplinary system. In Donte's trial, justice was served (as much as it could be in such a tragic situation) while in Kim's trial it decidedly was NOT served. In fact, it took vigilante action in the part of Jack, combined with the response of the community (democratic mob rule--I love it!) to make sure that the thug kid (I forget his name) was expelled for good. This definitely seems to play into Shed's preoccupation with insular bureaucracies (prisons, school systems) and their inability to achieve any sort of justice, or protect those who need to be protected.

LOL!! Thankyou... Lets hope Series 2 starts soon.....

Hi, Saw the 1st episode of 'Waterloo Road' last night on BBCCanada and needless to say, I won't be tuning in next monday. -_-

Why "needless to say"? I thought the show was quite good. What didn't you like about it?

Because halfway thru I was just bored. I found the storyline quite humorless and predictable. And the unattractive characters in the show didn't help. Just failed to pique my interest enough. I was quite excited to see 'Waterloo Road' in the BBCC fall lineup but it was just the opposite. <shrug>

I've always enjoyed it, really. Granted, the topics and relationships can be a bit odd, but these things do happen, and its not actually too far from reality. I hope it doesn't lose its grip of it's reality, much like Bad Girls did with ghosts and the like. I lost interest when that happened :rolleyes: