Written by Margaret Simpson. Tx 25th January 1980
The bicycle thefts are still continuing. Pogo decides to take the law into his own hands and organises a watch on the bike sheds (inevitably he ends up getting caught by Mr Garfield). Meanwhile, the girls are pursuing a more fruitful line of enquiry – they decide to visit the bike shop on the high street to see if any of their bikes are there.
Their presence is enough to spook the shop owner (who, as we have seen, has been receiving the stolen bikes) and it eventually sets in motion the chain of events which leads to the bike thieves and Madelin Tanner getting caught.
This takes place via a lovely film sequence. Tucker and his friends, with Mr Baxter, are returning from a cross country run whilst Pogo and his classmates are also returning to the school from the opposite direction (after a field trip to the local park). Spotting Tanner and one of the thieves (although they weren’t actually in possession of a stolen bike at the time, so it’s difficult to see what actual evidence could have been used to convict them) the two groups of children converge on the hapless pair.
Tucker manhandles Madelin Tanner, whilst Mr Baxter rugby-tackes the man and realises that he’s an ex-pupil. This would be Lesley Woods’ seventh and final appearance as Madelin Tanner and apart from three uncredited appearances on the Benny Hill Show she doesn’t appear to have made any further film or television appearances.
Archive Television Musings 
Graham Ashley (Mr Garfield) was the first of a handful of Grange Hill caretakers to grace the school grounds over the three decades the programme was on air.
Graham died of cancer in October 1979, before this series was televised. He only appears in the first few episodes of Series 3, which were filmed earlier in 79.
It is clear from his physical appearance he was ill when he played Mr Garfield for his last stint in the programme. He had lost a considerable bit of weight and he looked a little frail.
A very sad end to key character from the early days of GH.
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Classic episode, from Pogo on the roof eating crisps to Duane giving Mr Garfield a Hitler salute to what seemed like a hundred kids chasing Tanner and friend. Bullet Baxter’s rugby tackle was the icing on the cake.
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Although Series Three is in some ways a bit of a mixed bag, I adore this episode, there’s so many great things about it; it’s my favourite episode of the third series – (Episode 12 being it’s only rival for that position).
Although the new first year intake has proven not to be entirely successful in terms of creating the right kind of chemistry (that whole clear out and Series Four reconfiguration is yet to come), one of the reasons this episode works well is the sense of camaraderie it creates, and that of silly school days jinx. Although this early version of Pogo at times can at times be downright bloody irritating (by intention of design, although at times a little too much so), he’s good fun in this episode, as he initiates an undercover plan of keeping watch, taking shifts with Duane, Michael and David, on the bike sheds to try and put an end to all the thefts.
Cue capers of Pogo climbing up onto an nearby classroom roof, setting down to eat(!) and keep watch, only to be caught by caretaker Mr. Garfield, beginning a chain of amusing run-ins between the impromptu watch party and Garfield, not to mention Tucker and Alan, who are doing their own bit of undercover security.
The episode even succeeds in generating a bit of genuine camaraderie and likeability from the first year girls, the line-up of which has arguably fared more poorly than the boys, as they suss out the local second-hand dealer (who, in awkward historical retrospect, has a passing resemblance to Fred West about him!), who’s selection of bikes for sale include many which look suspiciously like the ones that have been going missing.
In among all this thief hunting action, we also get a scene in French class where the teacher likes to hold the whole session in French, and Duane is struggling to answer her questions about where Pogo (who is on stake-out duty) is. The majority of the scene is conducted in French, with only a couple of lines of English relating to Duane being incapable of understanding/answering in French. For some reason, during the filming stages of Series Three, this scene was one which Phil Redmond was keep to promote – on how the series was starting to expand it’s scope and what we could expect more of, as prior to this we’ve actually seen little to any actual scenes during classes (or at least, more academic classes – we’ve seen the likes of art, woodwork and gym a few times).
We are left in to fill in the blanks and backstory ourselves of how Madelin came to be involved with the bike-pinching duo. She is in a relationship with a slightly older, ex-pupil, and their natural shared passion of crime and trouble-making seems to have drawn them to each other. Madeline also makes reference to her probation officer – we’ve never had much information about her home life, but this one snippet of information tells us a lot (we might already have suspected as much after her shoplifting antics which she pulled Cathy into in Series Two, of which it appeared she was no stranger to).
Talking of Madelin, the episode dates itself – – along with Duane doing a Nazi salute and calling the caretaker “Hitler Garfield” near the start of the ep, which likely wouldn’t make it to air if made nowadays — when Madelin asks her thieving boyfriend if he’s going down the Wimpy at lunchtime – a large chain when this episode was filmed in Autumn ’79, on par if not bigger than McDonald’s, the chain does still exist but there are apparently 61 of them remaining in the U.K. as of 2025. When she and her two accomplices later come out of the pub, it sounds as if there is a brief (few seconds) worth of music replaced by a generic track on the current digital version, although I frustratingly don’t have an original off-air copy of this ep to compare to (still kicking myself that I ceased recording and archiving each episode on the BBC Two Sunday morning repeats in the 1990s, grrr!).
The location of the dodgy bike shop and much the location action of this episode is set in Crown Street, Acton – some three and a half miles from Willesden High School, which served as Grange Hill for this and the following series. The dodgy bike shop is located within Acton Covered Market, which is now – beyond the shop fronts directly adjoining the pavement itself – demolished and long-gone, replaced by new buildings (although sister site Acton Open Market, just a couple of minutes walk away in King Street, was reborn in 2005).
When Tracy and Duane later come out of the market entrance in Crown Street and cross the road, the watchmakers/jewellers where they look over the road and see Hoppy and Miss Mooney entering, is actually some streets away from here. However the recreational park where Mrs. Thomas takes H1 for their nature trip, ‘The Woodlands’ is directly opposite the entrance where they come out of and can be seen behind them.
The above mentioned scene of the nature trip, with the class all deciding to hide from Mrs. Thomas, is silly but fun. The historical Woodlands park and it’s features were renovated circa 2006-7. The old Victorian Ice House, which Duane and co climb on top of in order to climb the oak tree alongside, can be seen to be very run-down, covered in grafiiti and quite derelict looking in the episode (filmed Autumn 1979); it’s renovation several decades later has made it a bit more presentable.
The highlight of the episode, is both the returning nature trip, and Mr. Baxter’s returning cross-country class, all spotting the three bike thieves again helping themselves to bikes from the school, to which literally half the school descends on them en mass, chasing them across the playing field. Although maybe feeling in concept like a scene out of a (mixed gender) St. Trinian’s film, it is a terrific scene, and for all of GH’s harder hitting storylines over the years, it is things like this which have always been my favourite. Mr. Baxter does a rugby tackle to stop Madelin’s beau Geoff from escaping – enter clichéd but probably true “He’d probably be arrested and done for GBH if he did that nowadays!!” commented here. Bullet is, as always, great in this episode … in one earlier scene, he comments “”Stanton i may be many things, but I’m not a Doctor”, which sets my easily distracted mind to musing how, in a parallel universe, Michael Cronin, might have made an unexpected but great ‘Doctor Who’!!
This is the last episode where we ever see Madelin; We never heard what becomes of here, but we might easily presume she was expelled. Speaking of final appearances, this is the final episode where we see poorly girl Sally, still in hospital after her nasty turn the previous episode. It’s unclear if she was only ever a “one storyline then out” sort of character (another example being Simon Shaw in the previous series), or if was an early casualty – no awkward pun intended – of the new first year cast clear-out and reconfiguration prior to Series Four, after it hadn’t really generate the chemistry the series was hoping for.
In fact, out of the four girls in the final scene, none of them would make it beyond Series Three – Jenny (Trisha’s often forgotten sister) makes her final appearance in the next episode, and both Karen and Tracy also didn’t make it through (although in Mandy “Tracy” Mealing’s case, according to an interview with Mark Baxter, it’s because she didn’t wan to be typecast). The quartet’s final scene in this episode is some cheeky mischief being told to hush in the hospital, and carrying on anyway. An okay scene in itself, but – bar Tracey – none of them are particularly engaging characters we’ve ever come to care about.
But anyway, overall, I do consider this to be a classic episode, and in my Top 10 favourite episodes from the Golden Era of the series (which for me is 1978-90).
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