By the Bel: Blasts from the Past — Part 7

Heartbreak High httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O1NqPAEcsA

was the single most controversial and the longest running  kids program to grace our TV screens. It was successful because it dared to cover things most parents would never dream of talking to their kids about. The full cast and crew for season 1 can be found here.

The show was a spin-off of the movie from 1993 The Heartbreak Kid in which teacher Christina Papadopoulous (Claudia Karvan) and student Nick Polides (Alex Dimitriades) fall in love. The first season follows Nick and his classmates in their final years of high school. As the series continued the new batch of students take over from the graduates from the previous seasons.

We get to see Rebecca Smart again and quite a few other faces you’ll recognise from more current TV shows. Probably the most striking face would be that of Callan Mulvey, who now is a crime fighter on the Aussie made cop show Rush.

When a show can be that controversial and still manage to get 7 seasons aired, you know we had a quality program. Working, teen suicide, drug abuse, homelessness, pregnancy, racism, shoplifting, and romance all thrown in on top of the daily struggle to achieve in school and maintain some semblance of a social life.

The series was recently replayed on ABC 3, right from the beginning. I don’t think they played all 7 seasons but it was great to see the Heartly High kids back on my screen for a while.

They just do not make TV like this anymore. Political correctness has gotten in the way of the brilliant teaching aid that is the television medium. This golden era of Aussie-made programs is missed greatly by those who had the pleasure to live through it. We now cringe at the insipid and pointless plotlines of shows in recent years. We need to get back to basics and bring forth a second golden era of intelligently written, Aussie-made TV for Young Adults.