Grange Hill creator explains why original title had to be changed

BBC school drama had a different name ahead of its debut in 1978

Phil Redmond, the creator of British drama series such as Hollyoaks and Brookside, has revealed why the long-running BBC show Grange Hill had to change its name.

The children’s programme, which originally ran from 1978 to 2008, followed the lives of the children attending Grange Hill, a comprehensive school in the North London borough of Northam.

At the time of its final episode, it was one of the channel’s longest-running programmes, having aired every year for 30 years and spanned 31 series.

Now, Redmond has explained that the programme originally had a different name, but was switched before the first episode aired to avoid complaints from any real-life schools with the same name.

“It was called Grange Park because that’s an area I worked in St Helens,” he recently told The Sunday Telegraph, as reported by Metro.co.uk.

“I can’t remember if there were too many schools called Grange Park, or whether there were too few, but the legal department said, ‘we’ll have everybody complaining, so we need to change it’.”

Grange Hill was often commended for its commitment to bringing difficult subject matter to the screen, while presenting it in a way that was age-appropriate for its viewers.

Topics covered on the show included racism, drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, mental health and sexual assault.

On Sunday (14 August), BBC Radio 4 aired a special show, reuniting former cast members Todd Carty, Susan Tully and Lee MacDonald to discuss their memories from filming.