Thursday, March 06, 2008

Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to

EDUCATION! Waterloo Road, BBC One, 8.00pm

This series of Waterloo Road has gone down rather well on the forums, so we thought it only right to give it a bit of front page space this week. Over the past trillion weeks we have seen all kinds of exciting action - Teenage marriage and divorce! Potential pregnancy! Mums WHO ARE DEAD! The wonder of Asperger's girl and the Bitch Twins! Zaarah Abrahams becoming famous for being in Dancing on Ice before her character started on the show! The dead baby skeleton story (which was really quite touching actually)! Paedophile rapist supply teachers! Neil Morrissey's son and wife turning up and going away again! The old head quitting in a scandal! The new head also being involved in a scandal! Steph and Coke Zero being awesome in the school musical! A random asylum seeker storyline last week with no build-up and presumably no follow-up! If you haven't been watching, see what amazingness you have missed! (Apart from Mika's eco-warrior plot. That was shite).

Tonight's episode centres on two characters: teaching assistant Davina, and everyone's favourite incompetent slutty French teacher, Steph Haydock. We especially love Steph because we had a slutty languages teacher just like her when we were at secondary school.

Davina's plot sees her caught in the classic love triangle between boring but stable regular cast member Tom and randomly-returning-and-also-a-bit-boring-but-fitter former head Jack. (It's hard to believe, but at the start of this third series, way back in Autumn 2007, Jack was still head of the school) Oh, and in a storyline that in no way echoes former deputy Andrew moving overseas to teach and asking Kim to go with him last series, Jack is moving overseas to teach and asks Davina to go with him. We don't know who she will choose, but seeing as they have established there isn't a lot of chemistry between her and Tom, and they have got Jason Merrels back for seemingly just this episode, we have a fair idea.

Steph's storyline is classic Steph. Funding for her upcoming language lab is withdrawn, so she goes into full-on seduction mode. We like.

Apparently next week is the last in the series, though, so expect various plots for cliffhangers to be set up this week and expect next week to go out with a bang. We're assuming the rumours about this being a possible Neighbours subsitute were unfounded, but now it's hit its stride and become Holby meets Footballer's Wives and especially now Grange Hill is no more, we wouldn't mind if they were actually true...

Labels: BBC One, BBC1, TV, Waterloo Road

By Rad :: Post link :: ::  
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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Finally facing our Waterloo

SCHOOL! Waterloo Road, BBC1, 8.00pm

We took the loss of Bad Girls and Footballers' Wives quite badly last year - it was almost like someone had destroyed the whole reason for our existence. If the BBC had cancelled Holby City as well, that may well have been the last you'd heard of us. So we're going to make slightly more of an effort to get into Shed's first drama for the BBC so that we have somewhere to direct our displaced feelings.

Admittedly, on first look the adventures of a group of teachers at a failing comprehensive doesn't seem to have quite the same bonkers allure as the stories of women in prison or women who are married to professional footballers, but we're not going to let that get in the way. Besides, they all appear to quite like falling into bed with each other on a regular basis, and we can get behind that as a concept. Last series English teacher Tom dumped his also-teacher girlfriend Lorna for also-teacher Izzie (and we'll watch anything with Jill Halfpenny in it, really), so we should get some fallout from that. Perhaps also someone might cultivate a relationship with someone who isn't a teacher, only to be stoned to death for heresy. That would be quite cool.

In new-drama news, there's a wealthy businessman who wants to give the school a significant cash injection in return for a seat on the board of governors. We haven't checked out the fine print of the contract, but we assume that means we wants a say in the way the school is run rather than he just fancies some different furniture. Depends on how nice the chairs are though, really.

Labels: BBC1, TV, Waterloo Road

By Steve :: Post link :: ::  
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