Back to school: Previewing the new series of Waterloo Road

The smell. That unmistakable whiff. School dinners. Mops. Pencil shavings and, oh yes, pupils. I haven’t set foot in a high school since I left my own too many years ago to want to count, and yet that unmistakable odour blasts me straight back to double maths and sponge and custard. The canteen I’m standing in is as noisy as a school dinner hall, with far too many chairs pulled round some tables where the popular people sit and the shortest queue is at the salad bar. (Some things never change.) But this isn’t a school. And these aren’t school dinners.

Waterloo Road, the award-winning television drama began its eighth series last night. When it started, back in 2006, it was set in a failing school in Rochdale. Angela Griffin was a pastoral care teacher, Kim Campbell, and the school was under permanent threat of closure after poor inspections. Not any longer. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. In fact the poor inspections did at last lead to closure, but that only provided the opportunity for a fresh start. In Greenock. Waterloo Road is now set in an independent school in Greenock, housed in the former Greenock Academy which closed in 2011. The cast combines some familiar faces (Alec Newman back as headmaster Michael Byrne, Heather Peace back as head of English, Nicki Boston) and more than a sprinkling of new boys and girls.

In the world of television, the long-running school drama is one that has snuck along year after year, never making much of a fuss but always pulling in an audience. At the National Television Awards 2011, it bagged the Most Popular Drama gong, ending Doctor Who’s five consecutive year grip on the award.

On a stunning day, the former real school, now television set, buzzes with activity. Crew and caterers, wardrobe people and make-up folk – I don’t imagine it ever felt quite like this when the real teachers and pupils were here. The differences are clear inside too. Where once there were classrooms, now there are partitioned dressing rooms with pigeon holes on the walls with scripts stuffed in them for the actors to learn. In the larger rooms, instead of rows of desks and chairs, there are racks of clothing – blazers and ties, school shirts and grey trousers, clumps of scuffed black shoes and trainers. It’s like the dreaded lost property cupboard gone large. There are make-up and hair stations set up in front of smeared mirrors and on the walls large photographs of the actors are tacked up for continuity purposes – hair must be parted the same way, ties worn at the same height.

In the headmaster’s office it’s much easier to forget this is a set. An academic calendar is stuck on the wall and a morning break duty rota is filled in. There are box files marked ‘progress forms’ and ‘sick leave files’, ‘work placement forms’ and ‘financial reports’. The sign above them says: “Zero tolerance towards bullying”. It’s only when you turn around that you see the rest of the room is filled with monitors and a sound unit trailing leads and wires like entrails. As ever on a TV set there are people everywhere although it’s never entirely clear what most of them are doing.

Upstairs, along another corridor, sitting in a sun-filled room with stunning views across the Clyde, sits Scottish actress Laurie Brett, still best known for playing the long-suffering wife of Ian Beale, Jane, in EastEnders. Brett has joined Waterloo Road to play English teacher, Christine Mulgrew. She laughs when I ask if she’s a glutton for punishment moving from one long-running soap to another long-running drama with a gap of only three months?