Niamh Blackshaw

An emotional story about a destitute, teenage girl's desperate attempt to keep her family intact. Abi's life is shattered when her sick, single mum dies and her younger siblings are snatched away from her into the fostering system. Grief-stricken, angry, and misguided, she kidnaps her brothers and sisters and goes on the run.

Waterloo Road is a British television drama series set in a comprehensive school of the same name, first broadcast on BBC One on 9 March 2006, and concluding its original run on 9 March 2015. It was recommissioned in 2021, and resumed starting 9 January 2023. At the failing comprehensive school, and later academy of the same name, the professional and personal lives of the students and staff are examined. Affairs, scandals, blackmail and many, many headteachers. Who said education was easy?

Beneath the tranquillity of her home town, a detective uncovers dark secrets that threaten everything she thought she knew about consent – and her own life.