Grange Hill. Series One – Episode Nine | Archive Television Musings

Written by Phil Redmond. Tx 5th April 1978

Both Trisha and Benny decide to play truant – but for very different reasons. Benny has been suffering racial taunts at the hands of Doyle and his friends, whilst Trisha continues to clash with the teachers over her use of jewellery and nail varnish (both of which are strictly forbidden). Mr Mitchell sets out to find them, which he does, and once again demonstrates that he’s the rare sort of teacher – the listening kind.

The chronology of this episode seems a little odd, since Benny’s back wearing casual clothes (which is one of the excuses Doyle uses to bully him). A few episodes ago we’d seen him kitted out in a new school uniform, so it’s a mystery what’s become of it.

The other taunts, about the colour of his skin, seem to be hard for him to take and its the reason why he skips school. Compared to Gripper’s reign of terror in series six it’s mild stuff, but it’s still noteworthy for the series to have tackled this topic so early on.

Trisha’s attitude is the one she’ll carry with her for the rest of her time at Grange Hill. She simply doesn’t understand why other people have the right to tell her what to wear. When school uniform is later made optional it’s something that obviously pleases her, but she’ll still find plenty of other things to complain about!

Trisha and Benny both run into each other (literally) whilst they’re truanting. This is the scene that has Trisha’s infamous line to Benny where she tells him that he “can’t help being a nig-nog.” It’s meant ironically (he answers back that she can’t help being a honky) but it’s one of those moments that would be almost certain to be snipped out now if the episode was repeated. Which is a shame, as it works in the context of the story.

It seems that nobody really believed Grange Hill would be a particular success, so the positive ratings and feedback (tempered with the negative feedback from some press and parents) seemed to have come as a surprise. A second series, with double the amount of episodes, was commissioned and from series two onwards the show would begin to develop a greater level of complexity (especially with interweaving plot-threads).

The final episode of Series One, and we don’t yet have the “big series close” of a school event or production or suchlike, which would become something of a staple of each series as ‘Grange Hill’ progressed.

Instead, things focus on both Trisha and Benny, both of whom are having trouble with things at school – Trisha because of her continually breaking the school dress code (a GH trope which of course will go on to be reworked many times, most notably with Suzanne Ross, also Justine Dean…) and Benny because the racial taunts coming from Doyle.

I’ve been roughly tracking down filming locations used, and was fascinate to try and fine where the art exhibition where Trisha and Benny both take refuge was. For a brief while I even wondered if it was the building at Elstree, which would later serve as the Grange Hill building from Series Eight onwards – there are definitely some similarities! But eventually, I realised it actually seems to be a light redressing of the Series 1-2 Grange Hill School itself, Kingsbury High School. Makes sense as a cost-cutting measure; and of course as soon as things move to the art exhibition itself upstairs, we are quite clearly back on a constructed set back at TV Center.

We get an interesting bonding between Trisha and Benny (I wondered if even a faint hint of possible romance), and it’s maybe a shame this pairing was never expanded upon past this one single episode. We also have the most memorable line of the episode, if not of all Series One, when Trisha says to Benny “Anyway, it’s not your fault it’s a nig-nog, is it”, to which Benny laughs back “Anyway, it’s not your fault you’re a honkey, is it”. Certainly a line which would never make it to air today (on children’s television or anywhere else); Frustratingly I stopped recording the BBC Two repeats in the 1990s a few episodes in (which I’ve always kicked myself as I tended to record just about EVERYTHING), so I can’t even check if it was present on that broadcast or not. But, without getting into the whole, endless “It was acceptable in the era” and “It reflects the language people used” tangle, I do love the exchange for it’s sheer bluntness on the matter.

I find it interesting that Mr. Mitchell asks Miss Mather to cover for him at school so that he can go and try to find the two absconding pupils, and then sits with them to address their problems himself. Although from a very different era (I was only a few months of when this episode was first shown) and an inner-London school where possibly different methods were accepted, the whole way the episode shows things dealt with is certainly different to how any school I’ve known would deal with the matter.

Not a bad episode, although not as pacey as the typical episode, with the scenes in the art exhibition although good, maybe running on for a bit too long; could have done with tightening. A fair closing episode to a good first series though.

>By the way, regarding the blog’s comment that “It seems that nobody really believed Grange Hill would be a particular success, so the positive ratings and feedback (tempered with the negative feedback from some press and parents) seemed to have come as a surprise” – in some of the newspaper coverage for Episode One, it is already mentioned that the BBC had plans to recommission the series, with double the episodes and hopes for a twice-weekly slot… before the first episode had even been broadcast, suggestion it might have been a case the series not being in post-production that the Beeb realised what they had and showed more interest in it. Possibly.

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One thought on “Grange Hill. Series One – Episode Nine”

P.j. Gathergood says:

June 22, 2025 at 1:44 pm

The final episode of Series One, and we don’t yet have the “big series close” of a school event or production or suchlike, which would become something of a staple of each series as ‘Grange Hill’ progressed.

Instead, things focus on both Trisha and Benny, both of whom are having trouble with things at school – Trisha because of her continually breaking the school dress code (a GH trope which of course will go on to be reworked many times, most notably with Suzanne Ross, also Justine Dean…) and Benny because the racial taunts coming from Doyle.

I’ve been roughly tracking down filming locations used, and was fascinate to try and fine where the art exhibition where Trisha and Benny both take refuge was. For a brief while I even wondered if it was the building at Elstree, which would later serve as the Grange Hill building from Series Eight onwards – there are definitely some similarities! But eventually, I realised it actually seems to be a light redressing of the Series 1-2 Grange Hill School itself, Kingsbury High School. Makes sense as a cost-cutting measure; and of course as soon as things move to the art exhibition itself upstairs, we are quite clearly back on a constructed set back at TV Center.

We get an interesting bonding between Trisha and Benny (I wondered if even a faint hint of possible romance), and it’s maybe a shame this pairing was never expanded upon past this one single episode. We also have the most memorable line of the episode, if not of all Series One, when Trisha says to Benny “Anyway, it’s not your fault it’s a nig-nog, is it”, to which Benny laughs back “Anyway, it’s not your fault you’re a honkey, is it”. Certainly a line which would never make it to air today (on children’s television or anywhere else); Frustratingly I stopped recording the BBC Two repeats in the 1990s a few episodes in (which I’ve always kicked myself as I tended to record just about EVERYTHING), so I can’t even check if it was present on that broadcast or not. But, without getting into the whole, endless “It was acceptable in the era” and “It reflects the language people used” tangle, I do love the exchange for it’s sheer bluntness on the matter.

I find it interesting that Mr. Mitchell asks Miss Mather to cover for him at school so that he can go and try to find the two absconding pupils, and then sits with them to address their problems himself. Although from a very different era (I was only a few months of when this episode was first shown) and an inner-London school where possibly different methods were accepted, the whole way the episode shows things dealt with is certainly different to how any school I’ve known would deal with the matter.

Not a bad episode, although not as pacey as the typical episode, with the scenes in the art exhibition although good, maybe running on for a bit too long; could have done with tightening. A fair closing episode to a good first series though.

>By the way, regarding the blog’s comment that “It seems that nobody really believed Grange Hill would be a particular success, so the positive ratings and feedback (tempered with the negative feedback from some press and parents) seemed to have come as a surprise” – in some of the newspaper coverage for Episode One, it is already mentioned that the BBC had plans to recommission the series, with double the episodes and hopes for a twice-weekly slot… before the first episode had even been broadcast, suggestion it might have been a case the series not being in post-production that the Beeb realised what they had and showed more interest in it. Possibly.

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