An award-winning documentary series that was called ‘inspirational’ and ‘heart-warming’ is set to return to Channel 4 after 12 years away.
Educating Yorkshire – which ran for one season in 2013 – gave viewers a true-to-life snapshot of the kids and teachers at Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury.
Hailed for its frank and honest depiction of students and staff at the school, Educating Yorkshire won over millions of viewers during its original run.
The Yorkshire series was part of the long-running Educating series commissioned by Channel 4, which began with Educating Essex back in 2011.
Between 2014 and 2017, more editions of the Educating series were released, including Educating the East End, Educating Cardiff, and Educating Greater Manchester.
After the success of the sequel to Educating Greater Manchester in November 2020, Channel 4 has returned to Yorkshire after more than 10 years away.
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No official release date for the second edition of Educating Yorkshire has been given yet, but Channel 4 have promised that new episodes will be ‘coming soon’.
On Monday, a brand new trailer for Educating Yorkshire 2 was released, which featured today’s students at Thornhill Community Academy being tasked with creating a new teaser for their own show.
In a similar move to Netflix hit drama series Adolescence – which focused on the darker side of kids at school – the trailer is executed in a ‘one-take’ style.
Soon enough, the school corridors are lined with cheeky kids playing music, performing choreographed dances, and conducting science experiments.
At the beginning of the trailer, a teacher says: ‘Right, okay, so just to recap – Channel 4 want you, the actual students, to come up with the ideas for, and film yourselves, the trailer for the new series of Educating Yorkshire.’
Two kids then talk to each other in order to explain that a trailer is ‘like an advert for a TV show or something’ before wondering ‘What would we do for that?’
A voice then says ‘Hey, we could do one of them one-shot things where the camera never cuts,’ before a dissenting pupil sighs and says: ‘That sounds well hard.’
The rest of the trailer then features – among other things – a child being shot out of a cannon and a group of dinnerladies performing a drum routine on giant pans.
On YouTube, @HampsterClamper put it simply: ‘This makes me want to watch the series now – which is the whole point of a trailer. Well done!’
The original Educating Yorkshire produced some of the biggest British memes of the 2010s, with Safiyyah’s ‘I’m sorry that your grandma passed away yeah’ monologue becoming instantly iconic.
Without pausing for breath, Safiyyah said to her friend Hadiqa: ‘I’m sorry to hear that your grandma passed away yeah I actually am like obviously I’m going to be upset about that innit yeah Hadiqa you know the only thing is yeah is that no one can force me to be your mate or anything yeah and I don’t want to be mates with you alright?’
There was also a heartwarming moment as Musharaf Asghar, who dealt with a severe stammer, confronted his fears of having a speech impediment and reduced viewers to tears.
With Educating Yorkshire being described by TV critics as ‘inspirational’ at the time, fans of the series will be hoping for similarly iconic moments when it returns.
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