Grange Hill - "The Grange"

"The Grange"

In 2007 BBC Children's ordered major changes to Grange Hill so that it fitted in with the new requirement that all programmes under the CBBC banner must appeal to an audience age 12 and under — younger than the traditional age group for Grange Hill, which was the same as to slightly younger than the secondary school characters. Under a deal signed in 2005 Lime Pictures was contracted to produce Grange Hill until 2008, so changes began to be made.

For Series 31, Lime Pictures creative director Tony Wood set about the task of meeting CBBC's new requirements. He shifted much of the action away from general school life to "The Grange", the school's multimedia learning centre, which was given a radical makeover and became as much a "hang out" as a learning resource. The emphasis was now on younger characters with a group of Year 6 pupils regularly coming to use The Grange from primary school; storylines were much lighter and fantasy sequences were introduced. One episode, "Boarderman", saw a Year 7 pupil become a masked skateboarding superhero campaigning for an end to the school's ban on skateboarding. In another, "Veggin' out", a girl and her classmates smuggled animals from a local petting farm into school, believing they were destined for slaughter.

The Observer reported on 13 January 2008 that the BBC's intention was to shift the action away from Grange Hill School and into The Grange completely. Phil Redmond responded in the same article by calling for Grange Hill to be scrapped, saying the programme had been "robbed of its original purpose". Redmond had been planning a hard-hitting storyline to return Grange Hill to its gritty origins in Series 31, and although he signed off the changes he believed it wasn't his show any more.