Heartbreak High is a hip and realistic series about the lives of teenage students, their families and teachers at a high school. Heartbreak High is set in an inner city school at Sydney Beach, Hartley High, within a multi-racial area. Heartbreak High was originally a stage play which producer, Ben Gannon, turned into a successful film The Heartbreak Kid in 1993. The show captured more than 70 per cent of the youth audience in its first five weeks of broadcast in Australia.
Heartbreak High originally began broadcast on Australia's Channel 10, highly viewed as a more Youth Oriented network compared to the other "Commercial" Networks, Seven & Nine. After the 1996 season, the series became a very rare example of an Australian Soap being bought by another network and new episodes commissioned, this time on the government-owned ABC Network (The most famous example is Neighbours moving from Seven to Ten in 1985 which then became a ratings bonanza during its late 80's Kylie & Jason Heydays). They only made a few changes (The show had already made a number of changes to the cast, truly reflecting a real school environment where the students and staff all evolve, thus making it less jarring than it normally would be), but the most notable was shortening the episodes to 25mins each - including re-editing Channel 10's original, slightly more adult content-filled scenes, into 2x20min episodes. It quickly became a cult institution for schoolkids & teenagers across Australia at teatime, when Mon-Thurs @ 6pm, everyone tuned in to see what would happen next (due to there being no available spoilers). The show ultimately wrapped up (due to funding issues) at the peak of its popularity and is extremely missed, but is shown worldwide still even to this day where its popular in places as far out as Egypt.
Heartbreak High is currently Screening in edited 20-25min Episodes on ABC3 in Australia @ 8pm EDST from the very beginning.