Michele Hewitson: School drama in same old class

Teachers at Waterloo Road don't have it easy.

The new series from the makers of Bad Girls and Footballers' Wives is about a run-down comprehensive school in the north of England where the teachers are only marginally better behaved than the awful kids.

Well, ostensibly that's what Waterloo Road (TV One, 8.40 tonight) is about.

It's really a fast-paced soap, with the emphasis on fast. More happened in last week's first episode than happens in Coronation Street in a year.

What it has going for it is economy of storytelling. Before the opening credits were over we knew the principal had gone barking mad and was now detained under the Mental Heath Act.

And in the playground at Waterloo Park, what passes for play is drug dealing, bullying and a teacher having a fag.

The new principal - we know he's a working-class geezer made good because he wears short-sleeved shirts with a tie and likes a pint - needs a deputy.

He chooses Andrew Treneman who is Oxbridge-educated and a bit posh - we know this because he talks a bit posh and wears swish suits.

He had applied for a job before. "I was told my methods wouldn't go down too well with the comprehensive ethos."

He proves to be a prophet. On his way to his first day at school he's on the school bus when he sees a student kick another kid and steal his bus pass. So of course he calls the cops. And of course the cops come.

"I witnessed a crime and I felt duty bound to intervene," said the new deputy head. The head went off. "This school is bang slap in the middle of hoodlum land ... and nicking a bus ticket ... it's not enough to give me a bleedin' headache over."

The kid he has shopped turns up in his first class. This kid, whose name is Donte, and is supposed to be tough as tatts, called his dad on his mobile: "Dad, there's this new teacher and he's picking on me."

You'd think running to dad, a great fag lug who gets to drive around in a stretch limo courtesy of his job as a chauffeur, might not be the sort of thing a tough kid would do.

But it meant the plot allowed for dad to turn up at school, have a go at the dep head and end up in the pokey.

Which in turn allowed for Kim, the PC pastoral care teacher, to put Mr Hoighty Toighty in his place. "I think you'll find that the children don't really like being regimented."

And for him to say in reply pompous things like, "If you lower the expectations of poor people they're going to stay poor."

These two hate each other, which means they will inevitably end up in the sack at some stage.

She talked Andrew out of laying charges, which meant Donte would have been taken into care.

Donte's dad, in turn, agreed to read an apology in front of the whole school. This went down well with Donte: "You've disrespected me in front of the whole school."

Later, Donte would disrespect his dad by stealing the limo, hooning around with a carload of teens and crashing into a truck.

Meanwhile, Tom the teacher was about to marry Lorna the teacher, but was trying to call it off because he'd realised he was in love with Izzie the teacher.

The wedding went ahead but you can predict trouble. Much, much more trouble. More terrible lines, more melodrama, more working class meets middle-class angst and, no doubt, a hit telly show.