Collective Identities- Byker Grove

Byker Grove is a British television series which aired between 1989 and 2006 and was created by Adele Rose. The show was broadcast at 5.10pm after Newsround (later moved to 5pm) on CBBC on BBC One. It was one of the few television series to air on CBBC that was aimed at an older teenager and young adult audience, as it tackled some controversial storylines.

The show ran between 1989 and 2006, and was set in a youth club in the Byker district of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Byker Grove was the original idea of lthe TV executive Andrea Wonfor. In 1987, she approached soap writer Adele Rose. Together they created a single pilot episode featuring children aged 8–11 at an out-of-school club (transmitted on Tyne Tees TV in 1988). In autumn 1988, Wonfor gained the backing of Anna Home, then Head of the Children's Department at BBC Television. Home gave the go ahead for a run of a series of six 25-minute episodes to be broadcast by the BBC. The age of the main characters was raised to 12-16 after support from first producer-director, Matthew Robinson. The first series therefore centred on young teenagers crossing the bridge from childhood to adulthood. Although some of the action took place outside the youth club, the series was unusual among dramas in that the characters were rarely shown in school. One of the major settings was the foster home run by the kindly but strict Lou Gallagher, the longest-running character.