Why was Britannia High not as successful as it should have been?

For me it had a couple of problems, I'm not sure what audience they were aiming for, but my 10yr old daughter & all of her frienRAB loved it, most of the content was fine for them apart from the episode where a brother was shot & I didnt enjoy having to explain the word 'horny' after the live show. It seemed like it was aimed at pre-teens & young teens, but was trying to go for a larger audience.

The scheduling was wrong, pre-teens on a Sunday night are being dunked in the bath & talked into homework at that time, Saturday t-time would have given it better ratings I think, then us mums could have sat & enjoyed it too.

We loved the idea of the live show & I think that worked really well

I hope there is another one next year
 
I, 20 and male, and my sister, 17 and female, both thought it was really quite good. She wants to see a second series, and to be honest I would watch one. But it feels finished to me.

the live finale thing was a bit crud though. Showed they have talent though.
 
It just didn't know what it wanted to be, was this CITV programming or grown up? It wanted to be "T4 Like." People avoided it because it seemed kiddish. The Sunday slot was stupid. ITV OVER advertised it, You'd basically seen the first episode before it ws even scheduled. It wasn't a proper portrayl of teenagers or anyone tbh. Its not very ITV.
 
Well ITV really.

The BBC would have made it a success but the ITV producers. Esp the in house producers (who made this show) lack any creative sense.

The cast was perfect and so were most of the songs. The writing and stories were purely at fault.
 
Because it was annoying and piss-poor? The weeks of trailers made this very clear, which is why most people avoided even flicking onto ITV1 at the time it was assaulting Sunday night television, let alone attempt to watch it.
 
Watched the first episode with my 14-y-o daughter who had expressed an interest.

We laughed like stupiRAB at the ridiculous script and never watched again.

Lowlight: "Don't be a wannabe. Be who you want to be."

The writers should have been dragged out and shot.
 
When BH first went into production it was talked about as an innovative drama-reality hybrid. Eg. the series was supposed to start with a documentary about how the actors were picked etc. In the end, these parts were either junked or stuck on the web, so we ended up with just a normal drama.

I think by the time it was ready for broadcast, ITV knew it was rubbish. Poor script, poor acting (despite good actors like Mark Benton).

The episode I saw had a gun storyline. What were they thinking? Depressingly (and offensively) it involved the show's only black character.
 
They tried to copy High School Musical, but didn't seem to realise that HSM was set in a normal school i.e. a place that every kid can relate to, not some stupid fame academy for unappealing wannabes.
 
this is exactly why i didnt watch it, you could predict the storylines before even watching the show. if they were trying to be cool and edgy (for teenagers) then they should have come up with some more original plots instead of predictable ones featuring cookie-cutter characters.
 
You don't have to watch every second of a show to realise that it's not good. It doesn't take very long to realise that nobody in the show can act and that the writers are lazy, talentless hacks without an ounce of creativity between them.
 
Yes I think that was the main problem. I liked the style and most of the song and dance routines but it just felt like a made by numbers show to hang the songs on.
 
This was a terrific series, but it was completely mis-scheduled. Having said that I also think the pre-publicity was highly misleading, as much was made of this show's similarity to Fame. That's what many were expecting, but that wasn't what ITV delivered.

Britannia High was quite simply a British High School Musical, and a very good one at that. Granted, most of the choreography was poor and dated by comparison to HSM, but the music, acting and scripts were mostly much better.

It was lots of fun, with likeable characters, and it didn't take itself too seriously. But 7pm on a Sunday??? Completely wrong! It is a Saturday tea-time show.

I also think that ITV over anticipated the size of the audience who would tune in for this, hence the blaze of publicity surrounding it. Whilst it lost audience across the run, that's not that unusual. But for this show, the audience weren't even there in the first place with only 3 million or so tuning in for episode 1.

My kiRAB completely loved it though - and there's precious little on TV for them of this quality, so for us Britannia High was a breath of fresh air.
 
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