Taking the High road: Waterloo Road moves to Scotland

FOR 156 years the walls of Greenock Academy have echoed to the sound of school bells, the scuffle of shoe leather and the squeak of chalk on a blackboard. In 2011, the last of six generations of pupils exited the school gates for the final time. As the teenagers departed for the new Clydeview Academy, they hung their maroon and white ties on the railings, tokens of farewell which were left to flutter in the breeze blowing off the Firth of Clyde.

Next Monday, the walls of the school will once again echo to the hollering of pupils and the din of bells but with the introduction of a few new sounds: the click of high-definition television cameras and the cries of “action” and “cut”. For Greenock Academy, whose motto was Hinc Vera Virtus (“from this place comes true worth”) will continue to deliver on its promise as the new home of Waterloo Road, the critically acclaimed BBC 1 network drama about life, love and, occasionally, death at the chalkface.

As part of the BBC’s commitment to spreading long-running network drama around Britain, so as to benefit the nations and regions and not just the cast and crews of London, the drama, which was set for the past seven series in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, has been moved to Greenock. If London has EastEnders, Cardiff has Casualty, well, now, Scotland has Waterloo Road, which begins filming next week.

Judging by a brief tour of the new “school”, all will be ready for the new intake of “pupils” and “staff”. The building now has a bold new sign: Waterloo Road, the science rooms are equipped with glass beakers and Bunsen burners and the English department has been dressed with posters based on Nineteen Eighty-Four, declaring: “War is Peace” and “Freedom is Slavery”. The canteen is decorated with outsized vegetables and classrooms have been refitted with vast wall-length window-panes to allow the cameras to capture the nefarious activities which, over the past six years, have included copious affairs, beatings, adultery and moments where the line between pupil and teachers has certainly been blurred. The school car park at Waterloo Road must surely count as one of the most hazardous in Britain, with a number of characters having been run over to the delight of the show’s five million loyal viewers.

Fans of the show who want to avoid spoilers should probably skip to the next paragraph. Rather than simply have Greenock masquerade as Rochdale, the new series, which will air in the autumn, is not only filmed in Scotland but set in a new version of Waterloo Road – an independent school free from local government control. The current series will conclude with the closure of the old school by the local authority and an offer for the headmaster Michael Byrne – played by the Scots actor, Alec Newman – to set up a new school in Scotland funded by a former pupil who made millions in the dot-com boom.

Sitting in the school canteen, resisting the strawberry cream cakes on the menu, but proudly wearing the Waterloo Road tie of yellow and burgundy stripes is Eileen Gallagher, the Scottish chief executive of Shed Productions which created the show, as well as Bad Girls and Footballers’ Wives and who is clearly delighted to be coming home.

“This will be a game-changer for the Scottish television industry,” she says. “It is very exciting. It has been a long-running ambition of all of us in the Scottish community that we get a big long-running drama because we all see it as a game-changer. If you have a drama that is on television 30 weeks a year and is employing people all year round, from runners to directors to actors to extras, it changes everything.

“In Scotland, even the long- running dramas such as Taggart or Monarch Of The Glen, there was only six or eight a year and they still built up to something substantial, but you can’t build an industry with stop/start, six here, six there. You have got to have an anchor, a railway sleeper that everything is built around. For us as the producers, this is the beginning of a new proper industry in Scotland.”

The BBC has commissioned 50 hour-long episodes over the next two years, and Shed Productions calculate they will generate £25 million in direct investment over that period as well as creating 230 new jobs. While the main part of the school will be used as a set, Shed have turned one wing into an area for make-up, wardrobe facilities and four editting suites. “If you think about it. Manchester has Coronation Street, Yorkshire has Emmerdale, London has EastEnders and Cardiff has Casualty now and what does Glasgow have? It now has Waterloo Road. Having a big drama that returns and employs many people means we can now have a critical mass of talent in Glasgow and Scotland, so that we can grow lots of other dramas around it. This is not a ceiling on the ambitions, this is going to help them grow more TV drama.”

As the show remains hugely successful and last year won Most Popular Drama at the National Television Awards, it would be a reckless executive that did not consider the risk involved in such a bold move. However, the team are convinced they have done enough to prepare the audience. “We always fear every week that we might lose any audience,” says Eileen. “But what we want to do is grow the audience, we have worked very hard to make sure it is as strong and even stronger as it was in Rochdale. There is a fear, when you love a drama, that something is going to change it, but it is our responsibility to make sure the heart of it, is always here and become even stronger.”

The culture of Scotland will be expressed in the new drama, but in measures guaranteed not to scare off the rest of Britain. As Gaynor Holmes, the programme’s executive producer, says: “We did have discussions that we are going from A-levels to Highers and do you know that we realised we never mentioned ‘A-levels’ in the past, it was just ‘exams’.”

The show will also be assisted by the fact that its co-creator Ann McManus is Scottish and a former teacher who, Eileen Gallagher says: “probably knows more about the Scottish education system than the English”. There are, however, limits. Sectarianism and independence would seem to be deemed to be too divisive and insular for a network audience.

As Gallagher says: “We will have to think about (independence) but we are quite keen that the stories be universal and have a broad appeal. Although we are in Greenock and we are not saying we are anywhere else, it is important that we have a story that resonates with everyone else. What we are really interested in is that family dynamic, that the most important thing in the world is how you get your kids into adulthood. That is the universal theme. That is not to say we wouldn’t do it, but if it alienated the rest with all these wee Scottish conversations about independence. Some of our storytellers came up with ideas like, it’s set in Scotland let’s do something about Celtic and Rangers, but you know what, it’s just going to turn everyone else off.”

So, instead Waterloo Road will continue with its successful diet of drama, intrigue, gymslip mothers and stressed-out teachers, to the delight, not just of the audience, but now the Scottish television industry. So until its autumn debut, class dismissed.

TALES FROM THE CHALKFACE

WATERLOO ROAD (2006-)

The story of a troubled comprehensive in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, was created by Ann McManus and Maureen Chadwick, and showed on how successive headteachers saved it from closure while focusing on the dramas going on with both teachers and pupils.

GRANGE HILL (1978-2008)

For 30 years, the exploits of the pupils of a North London comprehensive delighted a successive range of young viewers while educating them on the dangers of heroin abuse, knife crime and depression. Prime Minister David Cameron said one of his role models was the school bully, ‘Gripper’ Stebson.

PLEASE SIR! (1968-1972)

The sitcom followed the exploits of a young teacher, recently graduated from teacher training college, at Fenn Street School as he struggled to contain his rowdy class.

JUST WILLIAM (2011)

The BBC commissioned a four-part series based on the classic novels by Richard Crompton and starring Daniel Roche (Ben from Outnumbered) as naughty schoolboy William Brown. The four 30-minute eposides were set in 1950s, and broadcast over the Christmas holidays, but the series was not recommissioned.