Tucker's Luck (1983–1985) User Reviews

Standard 80s youth drama

[colinprunty-1 · 7/10 · 28 October 2022]

I'd you were around at the point in time this programme went out you then you would have known that any series about youths in the early eighties meant you could pretty much predict the set up and themes.

They usually involved unemployment , tenuous relationships with dodgy girlfriends and their families , fights with the local skinhead bullies and lots of running battles around naff shopping centres and numerous arguments with middle aged parents etc.

Tuckers luck was a spin off from the very successful Grange Hill and followed the popular character life after school with his pals Alan and Tommy.

The subject matter is rather downbeat and the feel of Grange Hill has been lost from the optimism of their past youth to the gloom of early Adulthood in Thatchers Britain which back then was pretty much felt across the country.

It was passable but did feel rather soapy by series 2 and 3 and the stories around youth unemployment, girlfriends and bullies can only stretch so far before becoming tedious and dramas like this were ten to a penny back then.

Tuck into this!

[buckaroobanzai50 · 18 March 2003]

Most spin-off series are dire, but this one which emerged because of the most popular character of the children's series Grange Hill, was an exception to that rule. Todd Carty played Tucker Jenkins, the irrascible naughty pupil of the aforementioned secondary school, who was forever in and out of trouble, or engineering wild money making schemes instead of learning from his lessons. In Tucker's Luck there was a chance to show viewers his life after leaving school (Which in his case was between 1978 and 1983), especially the problems which he and many a teen faced in Thatcher's Britain of the early 1980s. Along with a few of his old school pals, Tucker often had to contend with adult bullies, one called Passmore if I remember correctly, and even a racist girlfriend.

The second series didn't outstay it's welcome, and ended in a good way, when Tucker bumped into one of his school peers, Trisha Yates.