Written by Phil Redmond. Tx 8th March 1978
This is a rather nice episode, played mainly for laughs, which centres on Trisha and her well-intentioned efforts to help Mr Rankin (Blake Butler). Mr Rankin teaches biology and Trisha has recently taken to helping him tidy his lab in the lunch-breaks. Her sister teases her that it’s because she has a crush on him – something Trisha vehemently denies.
When Judy pops in, Trisha grandly tells him that she’s Mr Rankin’s assistant. Judy asks if she can hold the hamster and Trisha, against her better judgement, agrees. Naturally, the animal escapes and then the problems really begin.
In trying to find it, they overturn a bookcase, before Judy hits on the bright idea of buying another hamster at the local pet shop to replace it. There then follows a race-against-time, which doesn’t work out quite as intended (Judy is distracted when buying the animal and doesn’t notice that the one chosen by the assistant is a different colour!)
It’s all for nothing anyway, since when Mr Rankin returns he spots the original hamster on the floor. But he’s inclined not to punish them, since they did make an effort to rectify the problem. Trisha’s in trouble anyway though, thanks to a run-in with another teacher, Miss Clarke (Jill Dixon). She objects to Trisha wearing jewellery in the lunch-time, which irritates the girl no end.
This moment marks the beginning of Trisha’s battles against authority. Any time she feels her basic freedoms are being eroded she’s not backwards in expressing herself ….
Archive Television Musings 
At the moment this is my. Favourite. Episode of. Grange. Hill. And. I enjoy watching it on. YouTube. Thank you yours. Mr. S D Baughan.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m watching the early episodes thanks to BritBox. This one feels like there’s been a breakdown in communication between the script and make-up – Trisha is pulled up multiple times for wearing earrings but her hair is so large that her ears can’t be seen so how did everyone spot them?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Same here. I’m LOVING all these early seasons. I can rewatch any of these rather any any modern soap opera. Like Dr Who I rewatched all old series and ignore the current crop. It has an unexpected innocence that (sadly) no longer exist. Grange Hill in 2021 would HAVE to be post watershed to be close to real life now.
LikeLike
After the controversies of the previous episode, and in keeping with the slightly more ‘reigned in’ story-lines of these very early episodes, the plot in this one feels almost slightly… well, twee. Granted, it’s got a bit of (then current) “attitude”, what with Trisha’s backchat and early anti-authority stirrings and all. But the “helping to clean lab at lunchtime / hamster escapes / let’s replace it with a new one… oops wrong colour” shenanigans feel like they could have come from any far gentler school yarn from a couple of decades earlier.
….Not that I dislike it; in fact quite the contrary. Although hardly a classic episode, I do find it a charming instalment. And although we’d had a bit of a closer glimpse at Trisha in Episode Three, it is this one which really puts her in the spotlight. Michele Herbert is clearly setting into the character a bit more by this point, her delivery of lines and many answering-back moments working far better here. What with the mention of the school magazine (though never yet a thing which will feature in an episode this series) and her thoughts about anti-school uniform (ditto), they are both issues which will be played upon in the coming years, and making her a very interesting character to watch.
Being a Series One episode, we get yet another “one time only” teacher – biology teacher Mr. Rankin (character actor Blake Butler, whom I associate with playing librarian Mr. Wainwright in early episodes of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’). Quite why Trisha has taken a shine to him we are never fully let in on… Considering we never (from what I recall) see Trisha’s father, maybe she sees him as a bit of a reassuring father figure, who knows.
Also, despite the “one off” appearance of Mr. Rankin, we also get the first of a handful of appearance from fellow biology teacher Miss Clarke (Jill Dixon); Although not seen again until Series Two, the fact that we’ll start to see various teachers more frequently does go on to aid development of story-lines in the long term. Oh, and it’s curious that we see Jackie Heron and her mob once again try to put the frighteners on young Judy again here, after Trisha’s sister had seemingly sent them packing back in Episode Three. There are a couple of minor continuity niggles in Series One (see also: Benny’s uniform), and this struck me as once such instance.
LikeLike
In the early stages of my second “Classic Era” run-through (1978-1990), and I just had to comment on this episode again as, from all of the Series One episodes, I find it the most curious (although I do like it). The kindly yet slightly doddery old biology teacher, the “…Just don’t touch the hamster” instruction and inevitable escaped hamster, the rushing to buy a replacement and the ‘hilarious’ error of getting the wrong gender AND the wrong colour… It’s all quite pleasant stuff, but other than little touches (Trisha referring to the teacher who gives her detention as a “cow”, for example) the premise it might just as easily be ‘St. Trinian’s’ or ‘Billy Bunter’ or whatever else, and the sort of thing that Phil Redmond was keen to develop beyond, and as such has always stood out to me.
But I do like this episode – I’ve actually always generally enjoyed GH’s lighter storylines over the big serious ones, and at least here in Series One’s generally “stand alone stories” format, it’s a storyline which – unlike Harriet the Donkey, or Clarke’s missing bloody bike – isn’t dragged on over countless episodes and outstay it’s welcome.
…However back when the GH received a repeat run on Sunday mornings in 1993, I actually found this episode rather twee . . . and as such, it was actually due this episode that I stopped recording the repeats to archive – for which I had always kicked myself for ever since!! I don’t know why I made such a rash decision as I used to to record/archive literally EVERYTHING … Possibly still being a schoolboy at the time, forking out for so many blank tapes may have played it’s part in that choice. But I forever have associated “the hamster episode” with that choice of which I came to regret for so many years!!
As I’ve touch on in several previous comments, I am tracking down many of the locations used as I go through each episode. Much of Series One’s location work was filmed in North London in the surrounding Kingsbury High School, which served as Grange Hill School for Series 1-2. And whilst many of these streets are used in fairly geographically correct context (such as when we see Judy cross the road and runs off across a large park (Roe Green Park) towards “Grange Hill”, occasionally locations elsewhere we used if need.
As such, the pet shop which Judy runs to, to be sold a hamster by Jean “Nellie Boswell” Boht, is actually back across in Ealing (some 8 miles away), “Aquapets” at 17 Leeland Road. Gone for some years (it is currently a dry cleaners), this shop does have some pop culture history, as is was here that Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe (then recording as ‘West End’), had friends who worked inside, “the pet shop boys”, and the took the phrase as the name for their band. (I’m not a major ‘Pet Shop Boys’ fan as such, but found this point of trivia when I was tracking the location down)!
LikeLike