Murder, drugs, brain tumours – and the first gay kiss: how Byker Grove redefined kids’ TV

Very quietly, ITVX is making a case for itself as one of the best streaming services around. All of Lost is there. All of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is there. It’s the only place in the UK to watch every episode of Documentary Now, which is quite possibly the best show streaming anywhere. As of last month, you can even use ITVX to watch Space Live – 4K footage of Earth seen from the International Space Station, a spectacle exactly as stunning as it sounds. And, if that wasn’t enough, now there’s Byker Grove too. Last month it was announced that ITV had secured the rights to the show, which originally aired on BBC One, and as of Sunday it will host all 18 series. If you’re as old and creaky as I am, it will provide you with a near fatal dose of nostalgia. Perhaps you had to be there. But if you were, then Byker Grove was a mainstay of your childhood. A fixture of CBBC, back in the glory days when CBBC aired on BBC One, it was a soapy teen drama about the comings and goings of a Newcastle youth club. If you had grown up watching Grange Hill, with its backbone of stern authority, the show felt like a blast of fresh air. Where Grange Hill was always partly about the teachers, Byker Grove – with the exception of one bafflingly bearded manager we’ll come to soon – was all about the children. They mucked around. They came of age. They got into trouble. They had accents that were fun to replicate on the playground the following morning. I was nine when the first episode of Byker Grove aired, and the irreverence of it was palpable. The theme tune was, and remains, a banger. The opening titles were full of iconography – acid-era smileys, skateboard wheels, crushed Coke cans – that showed none of the paternalism often seen in shows of this ilk. And the show itself was full of kids unafraid to talk back to grownups – which is always exciting to watch. And because it aired after 5pm (the quasi-watershed after which television was allowed to be marginally grittier), it was allowed to deal with serious issues. There were storylines about abuse and abortion and drug addicts being attacked in their squats. There was the first gay kiss ever seen on British children’s TV. And – thanks to one horrific moment that will for ever linger in the hearts of anyone who saw it – there was also a strong message about the need for safety goggles when playing paintball. Plus, people died. They actually died, and in grisly ways too. Car crashes, murders, brain tumours, electrocutions. In the case of Geoff Keegan, the aforementioned manager whose dramatically furry, chinless W-shaped beard became an important part of British iconography, his death in a gas explosion felt like watching one of your parents explode. This was strong fare for children to swallow, and it was all the better for it. Of course, as fun as Byker Grove was, its legacy as a star-maker has long been the thing that cemented it. The number of future celebrities who passed through the show has become legendary. It’s where Ant and Dec got their big break, famously, as PJ and Duncan. But it also gave a leg up to Jill Halfpenny, Donna Air, and Charlie Hunnam, as well as a fleet of actors from Hollyoaks and Emmerdale. Catherine Johnson (who wrote Mamma Mia) and Matthew Graham (who co-created Life on Mars) wrote for Byker Grove. Tom Hooper of The King’s Speech and, less impressively, Cats directed episodes. Obviously you are not going to park yourself down and watch all 344 episodes of Byker Grove. A lot of its early daring has dated hugely by now. What was thrilling when I was nine now often comes off as slow and pondering. But if you want to cherrypick the best episodes, it’s a brilliant resource to have at your disposal. Related: Share your questions for Meera Sodha, Tim Dowling and Stuart Heritage You could head to season nine and watch the aftermath of Flora’s death from a brain tumour, which was as harrowing a depiction of grief as children’s television has ever made. If you’re feeling brave enough to endure the generation-traumatising sight of Ant from Ant and Dec being permanently blinded in a paintball accident, then go straight to series four episode 20. And if you want to have your mind blown clean out of your skull, allow me to direct you to the finale, in which – and I promise I’m not making this up – the characters come to realise that they do not actually exist and blow up the Grove with a bomb to prove that they have free will. Whatever you choose, though, it’s just nice to have Byker Grove back. If nothing else, those of us who grew up watching it can now show the paintball episode to our children, and continue the generational cycle of trauma. Byker Grove is on ITVX now.