I Demand these Fifity-Four Seconds of Grange Hill be Watched, then Universally Celebrated.

 My strongest memory by far of the time Grange Hill went to Chessington Zoo is of Annette Firman negging a posh, ginger kid from between the plates of a fiberglass stegosaurus in the picnic area. Posh, ginger kids don't forget things like that. This is how I remembered that Series Five: Episode Twelve provides such a valuable record of what is now the "World of Adventures". But I had not remembered just how many other extraordinary moments the episode boasts. After finding it online, I posted the following single take to instagram, uncaptioned. Clickbait superlatives crowded my brain, but I didn't want to give any spoilers, and I still don't, so I must simply insist you watch it unprepared. This is from 1982:

 

 Did Grange Hill – and specifically director Diamuid Lawrence – invent the steadicam chase? Apparently, newer technologies were gifted to the cheaper shows first to play around, so maybe. And what play... Jonah Jones's satchel lands in the sea lion enclosure, and within minutes we're watching young actor and not stuntman Lee Sparke falling bodily from actual rocks and swimming with actual forty-stone pinnipeds. Was anyone working at the zoo that day? I think this episode might also be the first time we hear Janet St. Clair say "I'm only trying to help you, Ro Land", an instant playground banger. I apologise to any demographic reading who has no idea what I'm talking about, but I also immediately rescind that apology because here is the episode in full, and irrefutable evidence that Grange Hill could be – I hesitate before typing this but, yeah, no – as good as anything that's ever been made.

 

 

"Pfff. I want to be an airdresser when I grow up. You know. With proper training."

"Yeah."

"What's the matter with that?"

"I want to do something exciting. Be a trapeze artist in the circus. Something like that."

"You can't be a trapeze artist."

"Why not?"

"Tt."