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 aimed at an older teenager and young adult audience, tackling serious and sometimes controversial storylines.

Creation

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 the 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 BBC 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.

Coordinates: 54°58′30″N 1°34′41″W / 54.975°N 1.578°W / 54.975; -1.578

Byker is an inner city electoral ward in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in Tyne and Wear, England. It is in the east of the city, south of the Heaton area and north of St Peter's. Byker Metro station serves the area. The area also contains the Byker Wall estate. The population of the ward is 11,339, increasing to 12,206 at the 2011 Census, which is 4.4% of the city's total. Car ownership stands at 35.4%, much lower than the city average of 54.7%.

Byker has suffered the kinds of the social problems common to other inner-city urban housing areas, including juvenile crime and vandalism. In parts of Byker turnover of tenancies has been high. Families have moved away - particularly those in employment. Some shops and services have been abandoned and boarded up. In the mid-1990s it was estimated one in three of Byker's adult inhabitants was unemployed.

Byker is well known as the setting of the former BBC TV series Byker Grove and although set in the ward, the youth club featured in the series was filmed at The Mitre in the Benwell area in the west end of Newcastle.