GBH (TV series)

GBH
Michael Palin as Jim Nelson & Robert Lindsay as Michael Murray (DVD cover)
Genre	Drama
Created by	Alan Bleasdale
Written by	Alan Bleasdale
Directed by	Robert Young
Starring	Robert Lindsay Michael Palin Lindsay Duncan Julie Walters
Composer(s)	Elvis Costello, Richard Harvey
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	7
Production
Executive producer(s)	Verity Lambert
Producer(s)	David W Jones
Running time	567 minutes
Release
Original release	6 June – 18 July 1991

GBH was a seven-part British television drama written by Alan Bleasdale shown in the summer of 1991 on Channel 4. The protagonists were Michael Murray (played by Robert Lindsay), the hard-left Labour leader of a city council in the North of England, and Jim Nelson (played by Michael Palin), the headmaster of a school for disturbed children.

The series was controversial partly because Murray appeared to be based on Derek Hatton, former Deputy Leader of Liverpool City Council—in an interview in the G.B.H. DVD Bleasdale recounts an accidental meeting with Hatton before the series, who indicates that he has caught wind of Bleasdale's intentions but does not mind as long as the actor playing him is "handsome".

In normal parlance, the initials "GBH" refer to the criminal charge of grievous bodily harm (i.e. beating someone up)—however, the actual intent of the letters is that it is supposed to stand for Great British Holiday (as revealed by Bleasdale in an interview on the DVD).

The story is set in an unspecified city in the North of England, towards the end of the Thatcher years, a period during which local left-wing councils are vying for increased autonomy, particularly Militant in Liverpool. Michael Murray, an aggressive, womanising Labour councillor (with links to a militant far-left political organization), has just been elected as city council leader.

Returning to his old primary school, Murray locates and burns copies of his school records which describe an event that almost caused him to be committed to a juvenile offenders' institution. He also uses his position to intimidate the elderly headmaster, Mr Weller (a witness to the long-ago event), and remove him from his position. Weller is summarily dispatched into lower-status teaching work in a rural special educational needs school run by the popular headteacher Jim Nelson.