Written by Margaret Simpson. Tx 12th January 1979
Love is in the air for Trisha, as both Simon Shaw (Paul Miller) and Gary Hargreaves (Mark Farmer) vie for her attention.
Simon Shaw was a rather short-lived character – he’s a central figure in the early part of series two before leaving for another school later the same year. It’s clear from the start that he’s someone with a problem – all the evidence points to the fact he has difficulty reading and writing. Although since we’re mid-way through the school year it’s difficult to understand how this has gone unnoticed for so long. He’s clearly interested in Trisha, but she doesn’t seem to notice him – Trish has only got eyes for the fourth-form football star Gary Hargreaves (Mark Farmer).
Mark Farmer (later to turn up as a semi-regular in Minder) certainly has the gift of the gab, but Trisha’s mother warns her that he’s too old for her. Gary will pop up now and again over the next few series, almost always when the plot is football related.
Elsewhere, Mr Mitchell is appalled at the standard of grammar and punctuation in his class and Mr Baxter continues to rail against Mr Llewellyn’s timetable arrangements.
This is the first of Margaret Simpson’s scripts for Grange Hill. She’d go on to clock up nearly sixty writing credits on the show over the next decade or so (her last being the series finale in 1992).
Archive Television Musings 
The DVD version of this episode is marred by an unfortunate music edit of over two minutes, where the playing of Bee Gees records at a lunchtime school disco has resulted in an entire scene being cut.
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If ever any company decided to issue more Grange Hill DVDs (a pretty slim hope I know – I’ve a feeling that my off-airs will have to suffice) it would be interesting to see what would happen to future episodes with music.
The 1981 Christmas Special, with its School Disco setting, would be one of the hardest to clear (possibly this was why it was also skipped from the 1990’s repeats).
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Definitely playing Night Fever at the disco in the version I just saw on Britbox. What is eating the usually jolly Mr Mitchell in this episode?!
I really liked the Simon Shaw character. I wish he’d been in it longer.
How old is Trisha supposed to be? She can only be 11 or 12 as a first former. I’m surprised her mother (or anyone else in the episode) isn’t more concerned about the age difference. I really hope Trisha bashes the hideous Gary with her briefcase in the next episode!
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It’s a shame the disco scene is totally missing from the DVD. I understand about copyright issues but in other DVD’s I own that had similar problems they simply replace the song with library music or some appropriate muzak. Most scenes involving music are filmed without the music, which is added in later as they need to ensure the microphones capture the dialogue perfectly. Why couldn’t whoever was behind these DVD’s do this? It’s a shame as we’re missing some good scenes.
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The problem is often down to budgets and what’s available. Many programmes either have the raw dialogue available or had an alternative prepared for overseas sales where the music track may not have been cleared and that can make for an easy substitution. Others have at one point had a sufficient budget and dedicated sound engineer unpick the dialogue from the combined track. But when only the finished combined track is available and the clean-up budget is limited the options are limited to either cut the scene or cut the episode or not release the series.
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A number of vintage series I’ve collect (mostly US imports) are hit by music changes on DVD/Blu-Ray/modern streaming versions… Most of those series I’ve sat (or am in process of) editing them back to original broadcast states, which often includes ripping the original music audio from my old off-air recordings, and adjusting it accordingly to reinsert into relevant episodes (along as correctly various other “wrong corrections”, but anyway…)
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A number of vintage series I’ve collect (mostly US imports) are hit by music changes on DVD/Blu-Ray/modern streaming versions… Most of those series I’ve sat (or am in process of) editing them back to original broadcast states, which often includes ripping the original music audio from my old off-air recordings, and adjusting it accordingly to reinsert into relevant episodes (along as correctly various other “wrong corrections”, but anyway…)
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A number of vintage series I’ve collect (mostly US imports) are hit by music changes on DVD/Blu-Ray/modern streaming versions… Most of those series I’ve sat (or am in process of) editing them back to original broadcast states, which often includes ripping the original music audio from my old off-air recordings, and adjusting it accordingly to reinsert into relevant episodes (along as correctly various other “wrong corrections”, but anyway…)
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A number of vintage series I’ve collect (mostly US imports) are hit by music changes on DVD/Blu-Ray/modern streaming versions… Most of those series I’ve sat (or am in process of) editing them back to original broadcast states, which often includes ripping the original music audio from my old off-air recordings, and adjusting it accordingly to reinsert into relevant episodes (along as correctly various other “wrong corrections”, but anyway…)
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A number of vintage series I’ve collect (mostly US imports) are hit by music changes on DVD/Blu-Ray/modern streaming versions… Most of those series I’ve sat (or am in process of) editing them back to original broadcast states, which often includes ripping the original music audio from my old off-air recordings, and adjusting it accordingly to reinsert into relevant episodes (along as correctly various other “wrong corrections”, but anyway…)
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…In this instance, it sounds to my ear as if the music was actually being played in live – uncommon indeed. GH was “only a children’s series”, not widely sold overseas at this time (NZ and a few countries would pick up it up later), and relatively small budget, so presumably no extra cash or foreseen need may have been determined that the music was indeed played live.
However it does depend just what resources are available when going back to the master copies are available – several episodes of ‘Only Fools and Horses’ are chopped for similar music content problems (although the DVD releases of that series are riddled with edits anyway, but that’s another story…), whilst an episode of ‘Just Good Friends’ resorts to completely dubbing a scene over with generic music to get around a music track and giving subtitles of the character’s dialogue over the top! Seemingly, the Beeb’s standard policies were not as elaborate as US ones at this time in term of keeping clean copies of the audio channels before down-mixing them all on one track.
In terms of this particular long scene being edited, it does leave a minor hole in the story regarding Gary and his jealousy of Simon around Trisha, although not severe; but as I’ve already commented on my own post, it does have the unfortunate effect of not showing that some of the headmaster’s new ideas – in this case, the Friday lunchtime disco – are meeting with more success than his chaotic new timetable is.
Oh, and something to look out for – just as Trisha enters the room where the disco is, as she goes through the door we can see the tip of a sound boom above her, which bobs out of site as she goes in!
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A good episode, the more ‘ongoing plots’ nature of Series Two really staring to get into it’s swing now. To note is that, even though faint hints of Simon having some sort of problem have been given prior, Series Two does have a slightly mechanical nature where a plot-line will run for two or three episodes and be resolved, another one will begin (or take center stage) to take it’s place. Often two plot-lines will be told concurrently, but the more overlapping (and longer-spanning) plot-lines that are more fully intertwined are still a few series away yet.
I like Simon as a character, with young Paul Miller giving a fairly good performance as the likable yet quietly troubled boy due to his learning problems. But although a decent story-line, and whilst pupils with learning differences do learn to struggle and bluff their way, we do have to ask ourselves just how he has managed to bluff his way this far through school life without it remotely being picked up that he has severe trouble reading and writing. If there’s a feasible explanation then I can’t think of one.
We also get a real sign of times during the lunch-time “Pop Club” Friday disco (a scene edited out of some versions for copyright reasons, which I’ll comment on elsewhere), complete with the Bee Gees playing and posters of John Travolta and The Sweeney on the wall! This scene does illustrate how at least some of the headmaster’s controversial changes are going down better (ironically this is lost in the edited episode, making Baxter’s complaints against him seeming ever more one-sided), although we might speculate that the lunch-time disco turned out to be a long-running success – by the time of Series 9 and 10, we find that lunch-time discos are still held in the school!
In terms of production notes, in the Yates’ kitchen, the cupboard doors have become a darker blue between Series One and Two, and there are other minor differences, such as the clock disappearing. According to dialogue, Trisha lives in “Slater Street”, and Simon lives the “the top of Wilberforce Road” – in reality there are no such streets with these name in Kingsbury, North London where the bulk of S1-2’s location work was done. Simon’s house in “real life” is number 12 Shorts Croft, just a couple of streets away from Kingsbury High School, which was being used as Grange Hill School. We get no external shots of Trisha’s house here to give us hint of a real address.
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