Hope and Glory is a BBC television drama about a comprehensive school struggling with financial, staffing and disciplinary problems, and faced with closure.

The outgoing head (Peter Davison) breaks down during his farewell speech and delivers an emotional rant against the students, telling them how worthless they are.

[5] An animated title sequence was introduced in series 2, with theme music composed by Nick Bicât and performed by the London Chamber Orchestra.

Writing in New Statesman David Jays says that Lucy Gannon's characters are sharpened by indignation, and "sorrow rounds them in the Dickensian manner".

[8] Adam Sweeting in The Guardian was more critical, suggesting it is "old-fashioned melodrama", unfavorably contrasting Gannon with celebrated writers such as Jimmy McGovern and Alan Bleasdale.

The use of classical music was "disorienting", and Sweeting suggests that "maybe education is too pressing and prickly an issue to be liquidised into soap opera, with its inevitable clichés and illogicalities.