The series focuses upon deputy headteacher Eric Slatt (David Bamber), permanently stressed over the chaos he creates both by himself and some of his eccentric staff.

His wife Janet (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and new English teacher Suzy Travis (Nicola Walker) attempt to help him solve the problems.

[1] Steven Moffat left his job as an English teacher at Cowdenknowes High in Greenock to write the BAFTA Award-winning show Press Gang.

[2][3] However, its high cost and changes in the executive structure at Central Independent Television meant that the show might not be recommissioned after its second series.

[4] As the writer wondered what to do next and was worried about future employment, Bob Spiers, Press Gang's primary director, suggested that he meet with producer Andre Ptaszynski to discuss writing a sitcom.

[5] Inspired by his experience in education (in addition to his own former career, his father was a headteacher),[3] the writer's initial proposal was similar to what would become Chalk.

However, Ptaszynski realised that Moffat was talking more passionately at the meeting at the Groucho Club about his impending divorce and suggested that he write about that instead.

Even if you're writing something you think is entirely remote from you - Star Trek, for instance - you'll find the finished result is actually very close to your own experience.

[9]Moffat discussed similar institutional and political issues with The Independent: Staffrooms are funny places, full of articulate, mad people.

Moffat criticises "the [Conservative] government talk about the specially talented needing more education, but that's absurd, the equivalent of hospitals for the healthy.

The positive reaction of the studio audience during recording of the first series in 1996 propelled executives to commission a second set of six episodes before the first batch had aired.

Acland Burghley School, in the Tufnell Park area of Camden, London, provided the exterior of the fictional Galfast High.

[8] The cast recall that it was difficult to perform comedy on location without a studio audience to gauge the reception and success of the jokes.

[12] The cast recall that director Juliet May provided a calm working environment; rather than losing her temper when things went wrong, she instead focussed everyone's mind on how to solve the problem.

[16] The episode "Both Called Eric" features Antony Costa as one of the pupils, one of his earliest TV roles before going on to appear in Grange Hill and in the boy band Blue.

[17] The Guardian retrospectively commented that the show's "best episodes of ... manouevred their unwitting participants towards a climax of terrible sexual humiliation or violence.

"[18] Moffat integrated many references to secondary characters and locations from his previous BAFTA winning show Press Gang into Chalk.

[17] Jeff Evans, writing in The Penguin TV Companion, observed that "Slatt is certainly keen, but regrettably he is also unbalanced, tactless, clumsy, snobby, sarcastic, at times pointlessly aggressive and always prone to appalling errors of judgment (an academic version of Basil Fawlty, it was widely noted)".

There are inevitable echoes of other sitcom characters - a dash of Basil Fawlty's unquenchable apoplexy, a slice of Gordon Brittas's purblind monomania - but Slatt's entanglements are caused by his own cocktail of failings.

[8] Moffat told The Herald that Slatt was inspired by a real person: My main character, the deputy head, is a manic git, and he's based on a guy I never actually met and is therefore being denigrated terribly.

In the staff room, all these bitter teachers who hadn't been promoted would describe him as someone who would only briefly consider stopping short of invading Poland if he got the chance.

[2]Ptaszynski had attempted to persuade his friend Angus Deayton, who wanted to move into more acting roles away from Have I Got News for You, to play Slatt.

[26] Dan McGill (Martin Ball) is a young teacher who instantly develops a crush on Suzy when she arrives at the school, and attempts to date her throughout the series.

The cast point out that Fawlty Towers and Chalk are completely different shows, while Nicola Walker says that the comparison is like being asked to be "compared to a comedy God".

[8] Writing for the BBC Guide to Comedy, Mark Lewisohn observes that the critical reception was mixed, with "its detractors pointing out that Eric Slatt was a carbon copy of John Cleese's Basil Fawlty [and] its supporters praising its non-PC, off-the-wall approach and the breathlessly paced plots that delivered moments of high farce.

"[28] Tom Lappin for Scotland on Sunday derided the combination of Chris Barrie's Gordon Brittas and Cleese's Basil Fawlty.

[32] Commenting on the second series, the Glasgow Herald said, "the manic depute head of Galfast High, Eric Slatt, is looking more and more like Basil Fawlty on a bad day.

"[33] Tabloid newspaper The Mirror published a damming review of the show's second series opener: The head of comedy at Television Centre deserves six of the best for bringing back Chalk (BBC1) for a second term.

The standards of comedy are so pitiful, Galfast High School should not have been given a grant from TV licence-payers' money and it is time it closed its gates for good.

[40] However, Scotland on Sunday responded in a piece placing Chalk in the context of other television shows about schools: "where such dramas fall down is not in shirking some contrived social responsibility but in their playing up to so many daft myths about the teaching profession.