Waterloo Road (2006– ) User Reviews

Waterloo Road - great!

[xsally90 · 8/10 · 27 April 2006]

I was hooked from the first episode and hadn't missed a single one except from the second to last one of the first series! I was gutted! Waterloo Road had been compared to Channel 4's Teachers but I hadn't seen it - I had wanted to watch Waterloo Road because Jill Halfpenny was in it and I think she's a great actress after seeing her on EastEnders and Chicago in London.

Waterloo Road tackled many different story lines in the first series with the main one being the court case of Donte Charles. The story lines involved many different situations including bullying, homosexuality, father's rights, guilt and grief.

I found the story lines very gripping to watch especially the love triangle between Izzy Redpath and Tom and Lorna Clarkson - I was so glad when Tom and Izzy finally admit their love and they get together in the last episode! Despite this, I still feel a bit sympathetic for Lorna.

It was definitely an entertaining watch and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it before.

Great show Thats Past Its Best

[hypedupben · 8/10 · 2 October 2014]

Waterloo Road is a show I've been watching since the beginning in 2006. It was about a troubled school where students were beating the living crud out of each other and the teachers struggling to cope with the students, and their own personal matters.

Now In my opinion the Series 1-4 were the shows best years, it showed the school progress from a school in special measures with a beat up everyday, to a school that went out of its way for its pupils to have a better life at school, and in general.

Series 5 was decent, but then on-wards the show seemed to take a very different turn. At first it was a pretty dark drama that I would really only suggest to parents and teenagers but it went from that to a lighthearted family show, at least that what it feels like to me.

For example, in the first few series, there were more fights, more deaths, more arguments and most importantly, more drama, now conflicts get resolved in the space of an episode and the pacing just seems really off. The show went from 8 episodes in Series 1 to 12 in Series 2 to the standard 20 Series 3 on-wards, and these series felt very well paced with a overarching story line coming to a big climax at the end of the series, you just don't get that with Series 5 on-wards, in fact I had to look up when a series had finished because the finale's after Series 5 just felt like normal episodes.

The pacing and different direction also might be in part to all the different writers, as the original writers and creators of the show stopped writing halfway through Series 3 I believe. Its still good TV, and with the series ending next year after its 10th series, its a good time to go back and re-watch the earlier series and see how the show has changed,its just a shame to see something once to relate-able become so different.

Great series

[melbel1986 · 7/10 · 5 January 2023]

Enjoyed it

I love that real life Uncle and Niece are playing father and daughter. (Adam Thomas) (Scarlett Thomas) They have wonderful chemistry.

Great acting throughout and just like the original series. Looking forward for watching more.

Happy to see a few familiar faces return. However was sad to see clo die in the first episode was hoping to see more of her character.

Angela Griffin plays the head and she does a brilliant job acting the part.

It has so much potential for many series to come

Watched the entire series in a day and excited to see what else the writers will write for the next ones.

Loved it!

[emma_o17 · 14 April 2006]

Waterloo Road is a brilliant programme which every one should watch. It is a comprehensive school in England which is right at the bottom of the league tables and the kids there are worse than you could imagine yet pretty much jokers at the same time. Jack (played by Jason Merrells) is the head of the school and yet is drinking after three minutes of being it! Kim (played by Angela Griffins) is head of pastoral care who is an adult who actually listens, and Andrew(played by Jamie Glover) is the deputy head trying to rescue the school. There are tom and Lorna (played by Jason Done and Camilla Power respectfully) who were to be married when it turns out that Tom is in love with Lorna's best friend, Izzie Redpath (Jill Halfpenny), the drama teacher! What will happen there? There is also Donte Charles and Chlo Grainger(played by Adam Thomas and Katie Griffiths; Chlo is Izzie's daughter)who are a match made in hell. Will the relationship survive or will Izzie break them up? But the ultimate question on every one's lips is will the school actually succeed in its inspection? We'll have to wait and see! Watch it...BBC 1 Thursdays 8:00pm

Excellent!

[mizzbl · 9/10 · 4 February 2007]

Waterloo Road is a gritty real life school drama, which I have to say is more realistic than others on T.V lately. There are many great British actors in this show, such as Jill Halfpenny, Nick Sidi, Angela Griffin and Denise Welch. This gives the show the edge over other television school shows I believe. With dramatic and sometimes even scary story lines, I cannot think of many better programs to watch on a Thursday night, and i think that if more people would give it a chance, many more thousands of people would love it! Many of my friends love this show, but we all have to agree that the story lines can sometimes be a little rushed because the series are very short. But with this series set to be longer, and the DVD box set of series one coming out in March, I am set for watching back to back episodes!

Now I Don't Know What To Think

[ethan_3000 · 6/10 · 22 October 2012]

OK I have been watching Waterloo Road for quite a long time now. Back in the day this is what everyone was watching and I could understand why. It was very entertaining with the characters having their own dedicated episode at times and other factors of school life. But from 2009 to now I don't really know what to make of the programme anymore. The characters have all changed and so had the management. The issues that came up with either too far or unrealistic. And now the programme is quite unrealistic to me. I personally don't understand why they changed so much and involved diar situations like murder, fire and freak accidents that you simply wouldn't see. Also the situations between characters are also verging on either weird or simply cheesy which I simply cannot watch because I am embarrassed for them. Overall Im still watching but I think that it is unfortunate in what is happening with the programme overall now.

Spot on!

[colincaven · 9/10 · 27 January 2021]

Only thing that lets it down are a few events within the series which are unrealistic!

Excellent but..

[xyz49271 · 7/10 · 26 November 2019]

As with most great long running dramas the plots get a little too absurd after the 4/5 season & WR is no exception. After Izzy's death I loved how Tom, Cho & Mika bonded as a family & grew. For the first few seasons this dynamic is the main underlying storyline that held the show together. After the girls graduate & go off to Uni the plots get lost.

Tom is still around but with no Cho in the show (Mika had left the previous year) it started to loose its appeal. I found the storyline about having his 14 year old love child turn up a predictable way of stringing out he as a parent, I rather an episode of one of the girls coming back from university for an episode or two to show how they are still in contact but alas not. Instead it's like they were never there once the Turkey Baster baby is on the scene.

The other characters that come in as replacements are ok but by season 5 without the granger girls the show has lost its linchpin characters & is looking muddled & tired.

Great show!

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 15 April 2010]

The show started off a little slow, but it has improved a lot over the years. It is a gritty and compelling look at pupils and teachers at a comprehensive school and the situations they get into. The series is well filmed, with excellent photography and the school itself looks imposing. The writing is engaging and well written, and the stories are compelling and well structured. And the acting is surprisingly good, not the amateurish sort of acting I have seen but it is good. Denise Welch is excellent as Steph as is Angela Griffin and the students are all quite believable with good chemistry. The music is also good, it does stick in your head and is easy to remember.

Overall, a great show. I have seen a lot of good shows and dramas on BBC and this is luckily one of them. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Soapy melodrama, but entertaining

[pawebster · 7/10 · 10 December 2007]

I have only seen the first series, being one of the sad viewers of the sad overseas channel, BBC Prime.

Poor old Jason Merrells is yet again cast as a well-meaning northern male struggling with frustrations mainly caused by the women in his life. The best character in it is Andrew Treneman (very believably played by Jamie Glover). It is good, and rare, to see an idealistic character who is not a cliché and is not ridiculed.

The four young actors playing the teenagers are also excellent.

Camilla Power, once Jill Pole in the BBC Narnia, is a wife cheated on by her husband, just as she was in Sparkhouse. She is beautiful but painfully thin.

It is not remotely realistic (e.g. the school only seems to have about ten staff and, at most, fifty pupils - Grange Hill was better) and the goings on are of the most melodramatic soap opera type, especially the love triangle and the teenage car crash story - neither of which is really dependent on the school setting at all. The way that Merrells is rescued at the last second from a fiery death is the kind of thing normally found in children's stories. Does he then have to spend hours making statements or getting treatment for his injuries? No, he just changes his shirt and heads for the pub!

It's potty, but it is entertaining and has moments that do remind me (a teacher) of life in a British secondary school.

Lost in Manchester

[John-396 · 1/10 · 19 August 2010]

Here in Australia we are now being treated to four episodes of WR a week. Perhaps it is this rapidity of going through the series (we are now well into Series 3) that reveals the major problem with this offering.

The characters don't seem to have memories; at least they can never learn from their mistakes! I suspect this may be due to the plethora of writers and directors - I haven't really checked, but there seems to be about eight of each. There seems to be no "book" outlining the major characteristics of the characters.

Consequently the characterization by the actors is all over the place, as apparently different writers and directors have different views of how some characters should behave. Some have more personalities than Tara! (As in United States of). The rapidity with which the Tom/Izzy/Lorna triangle formed and reformed in Series 2 - when seen one episode each day - was just mind boggling.

Rimmer seems to have a memory problem. When will he ever learn that Steph is a problem for him - perhaps never as every writer seems to want to do a Jack and Steph get together one last time.

There are also major gaps in the storyline which seem to defy logic. In what world is Lewis Seddon - would-be thug and general waste of space - going to suddenly (but without any explanation) going to pop up as a kitchenhand in the very canteen his family tried to destroy only two or three days (as we see the show) earlier?

Didn't watch the original series but this one is amazing!

[rkmaclennan · 10/10 · 7 January 2023]

Like other reviewers, I don't normally write reviews but felt compelled to share my opinion after the negativity in the main stream press.

I have just binge watched the whole series over a few days and was going online to check if there was going to be a sequel anytime soon.

The series has had me in tears many time and as someone who works with young people it accurately represents what a lot of them are faced with and how this affects life challenges. Amazing acting from both the younger and older stars.

It's an incredibly emotional programme. No spoilers from me, just looking forward to a follow up.

For a school, the staff don't seem to be very clever

[chuckewe · 6/10 · 20 July 2006]

I like the BBC, a lot of my favorite shows over the years have been broadcast on BBC America. One of my favorite aspects of BBC productions (At least those broadcast here in the U.S.) is a series season is short, and rarely does a show outlive it's time, lingering on because the characters have become a part of our routine.

Another aspect I enjoy is the character development. With such short seasons, the pace of shows are generally much quicker and the characters fleshed out early on. However, in the case of Waterloo Road, I fear there is little direction as to what the show is about, who the characters are, and surprisingly the staff appears to be more dysfunctional then the student's. This isn't meant as a criticism of the actors, but rather of the writing and concept of the show. Were it not airing during the bleakness of U.S. summer reruns and never ending "reality shows" I'd have probably quit watching some time ago. However, unlike great BBC shows like SPOOKS *MI5) or many of the "Mystery Monday" line up like Wire in the Blood, or Night Detective, which require my attention, Waterloo Road allows me to serve the internet, check google news, or play spider solitaire while it plays in the background.

The situations of the kids, are their moronic thought processes are easily waived off, as let's face it, kids always think they are much more clever then they really are. (I know I knew more at that age then I know now)Part of adolescents is learning just how much we still have to learn.

The teachers however are another story. One would expect they would have outgrown both their hormonal imbalances and emotional insecurity. The old adage about "not dipping your quill into the company inkwell" seems to have been a missing component of their education. Having your own kids in the school you teach certainly doesn't seem to be a very good idea.

The silliness and absurdity far outweighs the occasional dramatic moment or insightful instance which stumbles off the tepid script.

Entertaining in a Scary Way

[ricardo_edm · 4/10 · 11 December 2017]

I can see the appeal that this series had when it originally aired. I've had the chance to "binge" on it and at times it's been quite entertaining. However, maybe because I'm watching the episodes without the need for interruption, the plots are quite fresh in my memory from installment to installment. The series suffered a horrible lack of good writers. The plots didn't only push credibility but at times were completely wacky (a student gets expelled for cheating but one who poisons all his classmates isn't). It was also interesting to watch how none of the good guys seemed to pay any consequences associated with their actions and miraculously reappeared in the next season without a blemish. I also found interesting how the description claims that there is a school like this everywhere in Britain, which I found scary because if students are allowed to behave like this kids do it is no wonder Britain is having the myriad problems it's having

I'm hooked!!!!!!!!!!

[amyevans4590 · 17 April 2006]

I absolutely love this programme. As a 15 year girl in year 11, it really appeals to me. But to be honest, its 10 times worse than my school. But i think it is a great school for a city school.

Anyway, its basically about a run down school, were the pupils are really badly behaved, and the teachers cant control them. The head teacher appoints Andrew as the new deputy head teacher. Andrew is a Oxford graduate, and used to teaching private schools, not bad public schools. Andrew tries to bring authority, and eventually it works... and just loads of different things go on... like Dante and Chlo's car crash story line... and the love triangle between the 3 teachers (cant remember there names... Izzy, Lorna and the guy...) Ill be sad to see this end. I hope it comes back for a 2nd series!!

Amazing

[nikesterfun · 10/10 · 29 August 2021]

I have watched this show the whole way through once and up to season 7 twice and I'm rewatching it again. Absolutely love this show, I can rewatch it so many times. However, as the show goes on they seem to repeat story lines but it's alright because they find a way to make it interesting and different. So much drama. So much amazing plots. So many amazing characters. Best show ever. Strongly recommend.

Waterloo Road is a drama based around a school with every day issues: in the staffroom, between teachers and students, around the school and family issues

[lbaldwinsmith2003 · 8/10 · 8 November 2007]

I gave Waterloo Road a rating of 8 out of 10 because I thought and feel it is a brilliant drama. I prefer it to all of the soaps and drama's that I have watched in the past; the drama stars better actors, it has a brilliant story line compared to the usual soap/ drama which fail to keep up a storyline. The other drama based around a school is Channel 4's 'Teachers' which was some way 'Waterloo Road'. The other TV show that is similar to 'Waterloo Road' is Channel 4's soap 'Hollyoaks' which acting is extremely unbelievable, the storyline is of a bad quality and is aimed at a younger target audience.

Waterloo Road is now on it's 3rd series, I personally feel it is the best series so far, it has the most drama, chemistry between actors has grown and could lead on to many more series to come. Taking in account all of the features: Actors, Storyine, Director(s),Chemistry, Amount of Drama and how believable the drama; taking amount good points and bad points about 'Waterloo Road' I give this drama 8 out of 10

WATCH IT!!

Pretty weak

[elliottcoe · 2/10 · 17 January 2023]

A lot of people are saying to give this series a chance, but we did and find that it is incredibly weak compared to the original series. The only good character is Dante Charles.

This series doesn't hold up in terms of story telling, the writers have used incredibly cliché story telling techniques which makes this series very predictable.

The camera work is something to be said about too, again very cliché techniques and in a lot of scenes, the camera are constantly moving as though the person holding it was drunk, and constantly using a blurred background. Did they use the students to film this?

Not recommended, it should have stopped at the original series.

One of the best shows evvvverrrrr!!!!

[sallyd75 · 10/10 · 21 January 2023]

Love love all this drama on the show. It just keeps you wanting more. There are so many real life situations in this show. Eva Pope and Amanda Burton were 2 of my favorite head masters. As for favorite students, there are far too many to list. Just to name a few Finn, Sharkey, Sambucca, Maxine, Janeece oh gosh so many!! Twaxhers were awesome. Haydock, Budgen, Izzy, oh yes and chris Mead my #1 in the whole show. I hope this show makes it big!!! Wish this show was in the US! Come one Brit Box or Acorn get with the program!!!! Iplayer responded and said these companies could stream the show easily........ ugh guess I'll have to keep watching on YouTube.

Chlo Charles and Danny

[mulhollandlouise · 1/10 · 3 January 2023]

Chloe back she is an original why the hell would u kill her on the first episode back I think Waterloo road could of done better. Program has kept some of the originals but I think chlo should of had a chance show the world how grown up she has got she was a mother of 2

And Danny I feel for the kids so bad I really hope something good comes his way he could be important everyone struggles and goes though alot I hope Waterloo road gets better.

The uniform isn't the same and the theme song that they had years ago was alot better that's how you know waterloo road is starting this theme song isn't good could of done better.

Well worth watching!

[daisyatkin123 · 19 January 2007]

I just watched the first episode of the new series last night, and I have to say that it was absolutely fantastic - a bursting start to the new series! The series this time deals with bullying as a main issue, and this, I know is close to many people's hearts. I believe that by broadcasting stuff like this, it will get people to see just what life is like in some of the more deprived schools of the UK. The series also deals with some staff and adult bullying, as well as the slimy Lorna trying to get her ex-husband back off her best friend - SHE says she's not doing anything, Izzie knows otherwise, and feels threatened. It is going to be a shaky term at Waterloo Road this year, but after the bang of the first school day, things will, er, hopefully improve!

Grown up Grange Hill

[rcouzins · 8/10 · 14 November 2021]

I missed this first time round and have recently gone through most of the series on iPlayer.

It can be gritty and funny in equal measures. I'm sure there there will be a situation that people will be able to personally relate to (good and bad).

If I'm being honest, there are more plot holes than Swiss cheese with teachers and pupils disappearing never to be referenced again in following series, but go along for the ride and you will enjoy it.

enjoyed watching it

[marktayloruk · 8/10 · 24 July 2018]

Teachers' overbearing attitude añnoyed me . Especially that arrogant Scottish twit Michael And the way Kim changed after getting back from Rwanda. I liked Steph Haydock and share Grantley Busgen's cynicism. Teacher friend called it crap!

My favourite TV programme

[plumtreelaura · 9/10 · 18 August 2013]

I started watching WR (Waterloo road) in the 5th series because my mum suggested I'd like it. I loved it and thought the plots were very exciting!

I went back and watched the previous 4 series' on YouTube and have watched it ever since. It is now on its 9th series.

I have to admit, I found the earlier series better than the most recent, so if you want to start watching it, I would recommend you watching it from the very first episode on YouTube.

I would definitely recommend this to young teenagers, especially females, as my mum doesn't watch it anymore but me and my friends enjoy it and we're 13.

How to ruin a good show

[jasonelford-88273 · 1/10 · 11 January 2023]

Loved the original waterloo Rd. So exited to see it was being brought back. Watched 2 episodes so far, absolutely awful.

Story lines are very weak, characters unbelievable and should have renamed it p.c.world. Only person they've left out is a non binary Eskimo giant.

Only adult actors who can't get work anywhere else have been hired. Angela griffith is probably the worse actress to ever have graced waterloo Rd and she's now the head???

Why ruin a great show. It was bad at the end of the previous series, moving a whole school to Scotland with half the students, hardly believable but the current storyline beats that.