It tried too hard.
It wanted to be High School Musical, Skins, Fame...all rolled into one and it became a mess.
Was it supposed to be an edgy drama for 18-19 year olRAB?
Was it a sickly-sweet tweenie drama for teenagers?
They thought that by mixing the two age categories together, it would attract both categories, whereas infact it just alienated them both.
They both "right, let's create a hit", and that is obviously the wrong way to go about it.
With High School Musical, they had no idea that it was going to be so huge.
Ah well, serves ITV right for axing good dramas in favour of new fresh ones, which havn't been enarly as successful

I bet they would do anything to have the 4m + viewers who tuned into the series of Bad Girls which they deemed a "failure", so axed it!