Teachers

The debut series of Channel 4's comedy drama TEACHERS revolves around the lives, loves, and lost homework of a young group of school teachers. Andrew Lincoln (THIS LIFE) stars as Simon, a feckless English teacher whose enthusiasm is somewhat eroded by his sharp-tongued and uninspired Year Eights. In addition to problematic pupils, he finds himself and his equally hapless colleagues having to spark up in the toilets whilst the formidable Head of Year attempts to glean countless unstarted bits of marking and reports off him. The action follows the teachers' arbitrary attitudes to their own work and includes many school-night drunken confessionals and adolescent antics. Also starring Nina Sosanya, Richard Dale, and Jeremy Lovering.

Channel 4's comedy drama TEACHERS returns with a second series of extracurricular activity. Andrew Lincoln (THIS LIFE) stars as Simon, a feckless English teacher whose enthusiasm is somewhat eroded by his sharp-tongued and uninspired Year Eights. In addition to problematic pupils, he finds himself and his equally hapless colleagues having to spark up in the toilets whilst the formidable Head of Year attempts to glean countless unstarted bits of marking and reports off him. The action follows the teachers' arbitrary attitudes to their own work and includes many school-night drunken confessionals and adolescent antics. Also starring Nina Sosanya, Richard Dale and Jeremy Lovering.

Kurt, Brian, Penny, Matt and Lindsay are the teachers no parent would want teaching their kids. And they’re back for a new 13 part series that sees them making friends, falling out, trying to figure out the opposite sex, smoking in the playground… and dealing with lippy pupils. It’s business as usual for the young teachers specialising in immaturity rather than the traditional subjects. Brian and Kurt are still dreaming of getting laid, and they’ve met their match with new biology teacher Lindsay – she can drink a pint in 1.3 seconds, she likes curry and she can out-blunt any of the boys! Back in the photocopier room, Matt (married with kids) and Penny have managed to find the perfect work/play balance and are enjoying some extra curricular activity of their own. And what of everyone’s favourite teacher who quit teaching to go travelling in the last series? Andrew Lincoln returns as Simon, and he doesn’t receive the welcome he had hoped for when he surprises! his old mates.

Depending on where you get your recommendations, you'll see Teachers described as a comedy, a drama, an irresponsible depiction of the teaching profession and a (fairly) sympathetic reminder of how teachers are expected to be morally unimpeachable despite being ordinary human beings like the rest of us. In fact, it's all of the above, which perhaps does more for the show's realism than all its supposedly controversial elements put together.
The series stars Andrew (This Life) Lincoln as the feckless Simon, who, like several of his colleagues, is no more mature or advanced in terms of his ability to manage his own life than his pupils. The staff at the fictitious Bristol school are given to in-fighting, petty factionalism, bad behaviour, inappropriate nookie and dishonesty, both on and off-duty. That said, they also have to wrestle with professional and moral dilemmas and deal with their dysfunctional relationships: sometimes they succeed, often they don't. It makes for a superb, bittersweet concoction. If you want yet more social comment, it's worth noting that the series was filmed in a disused, empty LEA school.