Some blonde girl from the Rochdale school turned up last week, and I’m not really sure who she is.
She seems to be living with nude heels teacher, and I don’t really understand why. Maybe because every pupil has to live with one of the teachers, or at the school house. Unless, that is, they have a back story interesting enough to warrant location filming, like living in a squat, or their uncle thinking they’re possessed.
Anyway, nothing much has happened to her yet, but I promise I will find out who she is before her inevitable pregnancy scare/drugs overdose/phone hacking scandal storyline in the weeks to come.
Each episode of Waterloo Road covers the events of one day, starting with breakfast. It’s a bit (nothing) like 24 in that respect.
This week, drunk teacher mum has woken up with a killer hangover after the kitchen burning incident of episode two, which she’s already referring to as ‘The Fire’ like it was a life defining moment. Not that she’s learnt from it at all and, even as she speaks, is cramming another vodka bottle into her handbag.
I’m not sure it’s just the drink, though. Christine seems genuinely crazy. She lurches from angry drunk mum, threatening Connor with homeless hostels, to happy drunk mum, promising him sketchpad walks in the woods (an idea which, with her ABV, has fire hazard written all over it).
Meanwhile Lorraine is off to a charity auction to splash some of her millions on whatever it is people auction off for charity in Greenock, West Scotland. Nude heels is supposed to be her plus one, but bails at the last minute in some shoe related crisis, leaving Janeece the secretary to step into the breach. Lorraine and Janeece have nothing in common, what with Lorraine being a billionaire and Janeece being a single mum / school secretary.
How much do you want to bet they’ll bond like mad over a couple of glasses of function room Prosecco? I am desperate to see the chaos that ensues there but, since this is supposed be a show about a school (boring!) we have to stay on campus and watch less interesting scenarios unfold.
Other less interesting scenarios include history teacher Audrey introducing her class to microfilm (‘The memory sticks of their day!’) and asking them to search for newspaper articles from that long forgotten era of 1985. The year I started school, soundtracked by Live Aid.
There’s also a playground fight which never really gets going, and features a girl taking her rings off before squaring up. What an amateur. And when Mr Byrne’s awful past is exposed it turns out he didn’t just fall out with his estranged father over a mis-popped Christmas cracker, he actually tried to kill him. News of the head teacher’s dad murdering ways is soon trending around the school.
Though don’t worry, he’s not disgraced for long.
Tariq starts the day recreating the video to Radiohead’s No Surprises in the bath, which is a clear indication of how fed up he is. Things don’t improve when he gets stuck trying to leave the room, mainly because no one has bothered to make any kind of accessibility adjustments to the house for the wheelchair user. Nor, it seems, have they provided him with any kind of emotional support or counselling to work through this tragic event, to the point where he tries to end his life throwing himself out of a kayak.
Luckily disgraced head teacher Michael is on hand to save him. The speedboat rescue, while impressive, proves somewhat unnecessary when Tariq (who has been submerged for a good few minutes) is pulled from the water inexplicably yelling ‘get off me!’ instead of being appropriately unconscious.
One swift pep talk from the hero head teacher later, and Tariq’s back in the water. Only this time he’s actually there to do his time trial. He does a good job, scoring a record time (not hard, when he is seemingly competing against someone’s Nan) and stays very much alive.
So, all in all, a good day.
Dramatic scene of the week: Undoubtedly goes to Michael the wonder head teacher, who leaps aboard a speedboat and hurtles off to save Tariq looking quite the David Beckham at the Olympics Opening Ceremony. Meanwhile Tom does a fashion designer pout by the side of the water.
Byker Grove / School House 101: If you have a mobility impairment which requires adapted accommodation, look elsewhere. Provisions here are seriously lacking. PJ would never have put up with this shit.
Lesson of the week: In order to hack into someone’s email account you need to know which computer terminal they were using. Presumably you then just click ‘history’ followed by ‘inbox’. Just like they do at CTU.
