Waterloo Road's first series aired in the United Kingdom on Thursdays at 8:00 pm GMT on BBC One, a terrestrial television network, where it received an average of 4.54 million viewers per episode.

[1] The show follows the lives of the teachers and the pupils at the eponymous school of Waterloo Road, a failing inner-city comprehensive, tackling a wide range of issues often seen as taboo such as drink driving, underage driving, bullying, homosexuality, marital problems, exclusion, Huntington's disease, teenage pregnancy, abortion, bereavement, sexual harassment, mental illness and suicide.

Another central character in the first series is Lewis Seddon, who bullies fellow student Rory Bears for being homosexual and who does not behave well in class.

Jack Rimmer is put in charge of failing, inner-city comprehensive Waterloo Road after the previous headteacher has a mental breakdown after 30 years at the school.

Jack takes a big risk by employing Andrew Treneman, a man more familiar with the upper class, to help him turn the school around.

Heavily pregnant, fifteen-year-old Zoe Ramsden starts school at Waterloo Road, but even before she has had her first lesson, Andrew predicts trouble.