The Stage

BBC axes Grange Hill

Published Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 15:15 by Matthew Hemley

Popular children’s drama Grange Hill is being axed after 30 years on BBC1.

CBBC controller Anne Gilchrist announced the decision to bring the soap to an end as she unveiled a raft of new dramas to be launched in 2009.

The move comes just weeks after the drama’s creator Phil Redmond called on the Corporation to axe it, claiming storylines had been softened in recent years.

Gilchrist said she was sad to say goodbye to “such a much loved institution” but added that the lives of children have “changed a great deal since Grange Hill began and we owe it to our audience to reflect this.”

She said: “We’re actively seeking out new and exciting ways of bringing social realism to the CBBC audience through drama and other genres.”

The final episodes will be shown later this year.

New dramas for CBBC include Half Moon Investigations, which the BBC said is about crime corruption and “general wrong doing” in the school playground, We Are Family, about a family of singers who are a talk show’s resident pop group and Roy, the story of a cartoon boy trapped in the real world.

CBBC will also screen Paradise Cafe, a supernatural mystery, and a new series of Doctor Who spin off The Sarah Jane Adventures and M.I. High.

Yesterday, Gilchrist announced a specially commissioned drama to be broadcast in Newsround.

Called The Worst Thing Ever?, the drama focuses on a child witnessing his parents’ marriage collapse and uses real children’s experiences of divorce.