So bad it’s good – Waterloo Road

I don’t normally watch shows in the ‘so bad it’s good’ category – there are far too many genuinely good programmes which I can devote my time to. The one exception to this rule is Waterloo Road.

The first time I saw it I was instantly hooked: it was truly the most ridiculous thing that I had ever seen on TV. The action takes place in an unbelievably incompetently run secondary school in Rochdale, where the average pupil death rate is one per term. This is a show in which the staff go drinking in the pub every day after lessons; where everybody in a position of authority higher than the Headmaster is insane or frankly just plain evil and where the school motto, “ex nihilo omnia” (everything from nothing) actively insults the pupils.

In my favourite episode, the series six finale, a student and a teacher elope to Gretna Green to get married; two other pupils set off explosives during the school play and then run off to mess about on a railway viaduct where one of them gets stuck; and a fourth pupil becomes paralysed after tumbling to the ground when he goes up onto the viaduct to rescue his friend (of course he is miraculously and inexplicably cured over the summer holidays and the incident is never spoken of again). To add to the staff’s troubles this all happens on the day when the school is being visited by the head of the governors.

Given that everything that happened could be traced directly to their ineptitude and poor supervision of pupils, in the real world the Head Teacher and her deputy would have immediately been suspended. Here, however, in what is the most hilarious scene that I have ever seen on television the head of the governors actually congratulates them on their good work, based solely on some good predicted GCSE grades. Having seen the behaviour of the students in class I wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out that these had been falsified.

I’m sorry to say, however, that the latest series has been getting better. Not by enough to be called good by any means, just enough to become mediocre and boring. Fortunately the final episode of this series, broadcast last week, saw the writers returning to old habits and giving us another laughter inducing offering.

The episode opens with the Head of PE lying depressed on his friend’s sofa after having just found out that his wife Sian, who is the Deputy Head Teacher, had been cheating on him with the new Head, Michael Byrne. He’s soon feeling better, however, as he’s back in school to lodge a formal complaint against Michael and to unexpectedly take his children out of class to tell them that they are leaving for Ireland later that very same day.

The funny thing with Waterloo Road is that, no matter how many plot holes this creates, each episode takes place over the course of just one school day. An episode focusing on a longer period of time might develop some pacing issues, but nothing that a skilled writer and director couldn’t handle. Of course, such people aren’t in abundance on the show’s creative team.

For Michael the day beings with him standing outside and grabbing one of his student’s arm to get his attention. Now, having volunteered at secondary school I know that physical contact with pupils is a really big no-no. It’s an especially bad idea if the pupil in question just recently saw you threaten a man, Wayne Johnson – a former pupil who once stabbed Michael, outside the school gate and run off when he is hit by a truck. As the episode progresses we see Wayne waking up from his coma and breaking out of the hospital to confront Michael. He takes Sian hostage and makes our Head admit what he’s done, which of course doesn’t go down well with Sian, who runs back to her husband.

Michael also gets a lecture from veteran teacher Grantly about how no other Head at the school had “promised so much and achieved so little”. That’s not all that fair – while Michael is probably the most unlikeable of all the Waterloo Road Heads on a personal level he’s at least so far managed to avoid any deaths on his watch. He also hasn’t hacked into staff email accounts to identify a whistleblower, like his far more popular predecessor Karen did. Now that I think about it, one of the whistleblower’s emails to the LEA mentioned “falsified grades” so perhaps my guess about the GCSE results at the end of series six wasn’t just an overreaction.

A subplot of Wednesday’s also deals with pupil Jodie Allen finding out that her foster parents are planning to move to Bristol. Not wanting to be separated from her best friend she takes her advice and decides that the best thing to do is accuse her foster father of child abuse. Eventually she admits that she was lying, but not before he is arrested and the family pretty much torn apart.

By the end of episode, and the end-of-year awards ceremony (where it is heavily implied that Head of English Linda Radleigh rigged the vote to win the pupils’ choice Best Teacher award), almost everybody seems to have, improbably, made up. All I can say is that Jodie’s foster parents are the most forgiving people that I’ve ever seen. It seems we’re going to get a happy ending until Linda, whose grip on sanity has been slipping since spending a night with Michael and then being rejected by him, decides to run him over with her car.

This is a very fun show to watch, for all the wrong reasons. I’m happy to hear that fifty new episodes have been commissioned and that it will remain on our screens until at least 2014; though I really have no idea why it remains so popular. Surely not everybody can be watching it ironically, like I am. After all, it won this year’s National Television Award for Most Popular Drama. Whatever the answer to this little mystery, I thoroughly advise you all to watch the next series – you’re sure to have a laugh.