Phil Redmond is the most well-known drama producer in Britain, recognized as the creator of the long-running children’s school drama Grange Hill and the soap opera Brookside. Redmond rose from a council estate childhood in north Liverpool to become a media celebrity and owner of a large private production company. As for most working-class children, a career in the media lay outside his reach, and in 1968 he left his local comprehensive school to train as a quantity surveyor in the building trade. However, by 1972, he had abandoned this, having resolved instead to become a writer, and to take a university degree in social studies to help him in the task. The course had a profound effect on his career, and his writing and programs continually draw on forms of social observation.

The producer’s career in television began as a scriptwriter for comedy programs, but his major breakthrough came in 1978, when his proposals for a new children’s drama series were adopted by the BBC. What set Grange Hill apart from other high school dramas was the program’s realism and its interweaving of serious moral and social issues, such as truancy, teenage sex, heroin addiction, and racism, into the story lines. The program’s unsentimental approach to school and controversial subject matter has frequently provoked complaints from pressure groups. Despite the objections, however, the series has always been hugely popular with young people, and successive generations of school students have grown up with the program and enjoyed exposure to the problems of the “real” world.

Redmond wrote over 30 episodes for Grange Hill in its first four seasons, but his ambitions were driving him toward becoming a producer in his own right and following up the opportunities created by the advent of the fourth channel in Britain. He approached the head of Channel 4, Jeremy Isaacs, and its commissioning editor for fiction, David Rose, and succeeded in convincing them that they should adopt his proposals for Brookside, a twice-weekly soap opera focusing on social issues based around family life on a new private housing estate. Channel 4 brought a new style of television production to Britain by commissioning independent production companies to make programs. In 1981, Redmond secured a £4 million investment from Channel 4 to establish his own company, Mersey Television, and to begin work on Brookside. Much of the money was spent purchasing and fitting out the real Liverpool housing estate that was to serve both as the production and company base.

The development of Redmond’s soap opera is of considerable importance to the history of British television. For many years following its launch in 1982, Brookside provided Channel 4 with by far its most popular program and played a major role in establishing the viability of the channel. The setting up of Mersey Television in Liverpool to produce the program represented a considerable innovation, for it created not only the largest independent production company in Britain, with over 100 full-time jobs for the local workforce, but also significantly extended the opportunities for television production outside London.

Redmond has always contended that the audience of popular drama will respond positively to challenging subject matter. With Brookside he was to prove his point. After a slightly shaky start, the program’s realist aesthetics, pioneering single-camera video production on location, and focus on major social issues such as unemployment, rape, drug use, and gay rights has won over an up-market audience group not normally interested in soaps. The program helped to raise the stakes of production design, and has added a new seriousness to popular drama. A new generation of realist drama programs, including top shows such as EastEnders and Casualty, have followed Brookside’s example and explored contemporary social problems.

Redmond’s wider business activities provide a conspicuous example of the entrepreneurial spirit that has pervaded broadcasting in Britain following deregulation. In 1991, he was at the center of the £80 million consortium bid for the new ITV franchise in northwest England, which had been held by Granada since 1956. Though the bid was unsuccessful, the additional premises that had been acquired to substantiate it have strengthened the power base of Mersey Television and enabled it to extend its production. In 1990, the output of Brookside was increased to three episodes a week and its audience peaked at 8 million viewers in 1993. In 1995, Redmond successfully bid for a new youth soap opera, and Hollyoaks was introduced into Channel 4’s early evening schedule.

Redmond and his company have ridden the recession in British commercial TV at the start of the new century with more limited success. The proliferation of new digital and terrestrial channels drew away large numbers of viewers from Channel 4, and by 2002 Brookside’s audience had dropped to less than a million. Audience tastes, too, were changing, moving away from realist fictions to reality television and lifestyle shows Brookside was closed down in November 2003. However, Hollyoaks has moved from strength to strength in its niche as an upbeat, lifestyle soap, and output has been increased to five episodes a week. At the same time, Redmond has also resumed executive control of Grange Hill. The move of the production from London to Mersey Television has taken up some of the company’s spare capacity brought about by the loss of Brookside.

Redmond remains the chair of the largest independent drama production company in Britain, which over the years has launched the careers of some of the most well-known actors, writers, directors, and producers in British television. He continues to play an active role in television training.