East Enders

''EastEnders'' is a British soap opera created by Julia Smith and Tony Holland which has been broadcast on BBC One since February 1985. Set in the fictional borough of Walford in the East End of London, the programme follows the stories of local residents and their families as they go about their daily lives. Within eight months of the show's original launch, it had reached the number one spot in BARB's television ratings and has consistently remained among the top-rated series in Britain. Four ''EastEnders'' episodes are listed in the all-time top 10 most-watched programmes in the UK, including the number one spot when over 30 million watched the 1986 Christmas Day episode. ''EastEnders'' has been important in the history of British television drama, tackling many subjects that are considered to be controversial or taboo in British culture, and portraying a social life previously unseen on UK mainstream television.

Since co-creator Holland was from a large family in the East End, a theme heavily featured in ''EastEnders'' is strong families and each character is supposed to have their own place in the fictional community. The Beales, Brannings, Mitchells, Slaters and the Watts are some of the families that have been central to the soap's notable and dramatic storylines. ''EastEnders'' has been filmed at the BBC Elstree Centre since its inception, with a set that is outdoors and open to weather. In 2014, the BBC announced plans to rebuild the set entirely. Filming commenced on the new set in January 2022 and it was first used on-screen in March 2022. Demolition on the old set commenced in November 2022.

''EastEnders'' has received both praise and criticism for many of its storylines, which have dealt with difficult themes including violence, rape, murder and abuse. It has been criticised for various storylines, including the 2010 baby swap storyline which attracted over 6,000 complaints, as well as complaints of showing too much violence and allegations of national and racial stereotypes. However, ''EastEnders'' has also been commended for representing real-life issues and spreading awareness on social topics. For this, the cast and crew have received and been nominated for various awards.

History

Conception and preparations for broadcast

In March 1983, under two years before ''EastEnders'' first episode was broadcast, the show was a vague idea in the mind of a handful of BBC executives, who decided that what BBC One needed was a popular bi-weekly drama series that would attract the kind of mass audiences that ITV was getting with ''Coronation Street''. The first people to whom David Reid, then head of series and serials, turned were Julia Smith and Tony Holland, a well established producer/script editor team who had first worked together on ''Z-Cars''. The outline that Reid presented was vague: two episodes a week, 52 weeks a year. After the concept was put to them on 14 March 1983, Smith and Holland then went about putting their ideas down on paper; they decided it would be set in the East End of London. Granada Television gave Smith unrestricted access to the ''Coronation Street'' production for a month so that she could get a sense how a continuing drama was produced.

There was anxiety at first that the viewing public would not accept a new soap set in the south of England, though research commissioned by lead figures in the BBC revealed that southerners would accept a northern soap, northerners would accept a southern soap and those from the Midlands, as Julia Smith herself pointed out, did not mind where it was set as long as it was somewhere else. This was the beginning of a close and continuing association between ''EastEnders'' and audience research, which, though commonplace today, was something of a revolution in practice.

The show's creators were both Londoners, but when they researched Victorian squares, they found massive changes in areas they thought they knew well; however, delving further into the East End of London, they found exactly what they had been searching for: a real East End spirit—an inward-looking quality, a distrust of strangers and authority figures, a sense of territory and community that the creators summed up as "Hurt one of us and you hurt us all".

When developing ''EastEnders'', both Smith and Holland looked at influential models like ''Coronation Street'', but they found that it offered a rather outdated and nostalgic view of working-class life. Only after ''EastEnders'' began, and featured the characters of Tony Carpenter and Kelvin Carpenter, did ''Coronation Street'' start to feature black characters, for example. They came to the conclusion that ''Coronation Street'' had grown old with its audience, and that ''EastEnders'' would have to attract a younger, more socially extensive audience, ensuring that it had the longevity to retain it for many years thereafter. They also looked at ''Brookside'' but found there was a lack of central meeting points for the characters, making it difficult for the writers to intertwine different storylines, so ''EastEnders'' was set in Albert Square.

A previous UK soap set in an East End market was ATV's ''Market in Honey Lane''; however, between 1967 and 1969 this show, which graduated from one showing a week to two in three separate series (the latter series being shown in different time slots across the ITV network) was very different in style and approach from ''EastEnders''. The British Film Institute described ''Market in Honey Lane'' thus: "It was not an earth-shaking programme, and certainly not pioneering in any revolutionary ideas in technique and production, but simply proposed itself to the casual viewer as a mildly pleasant affair."

The target launch date was originally January 1985. Smith and Holland had eleven months in which to write, cast and shoot the whole thing; however, in February 1984, they did not even have a title or a place to film. Both Smith and Holland were unhappy about the January 1985 launch date, favouring November or even September 1984 when seasonal audiences would be higher, but the BBC stayed firm, and Smith and Holland had to concede that, with the massive task of getting the Elstree Studios operational, January was the most realistic date; however, this was later to be changed to February.

The project had a number of working titles—''Square Dance'', ''Round the Square'', ''Round the Houses'', ''London Pride'' and ''East 8''. It was the latter that stuck (E8 is the postcode for Hackney) in the early months of creative process; however, the show was renamed after many casting agents mistakenly thought the show was to be called ''Estate'', and the fictional postcode E20 was created, instead of using E8. Julia Smith came up with the name ''Eastenders'' after she and Holland had spent months telephoning theatrical agents and asking "Do you have any real East Enders on your books?" Smith thought "''Eastenders''" "looked ugly written down" and was "hard to say", so decided to capitalise the second "e".

Initial character creation and casting

After they decided on the filming location of BBC Elstree Centre in Hertfordshire, Smith and Holland set about creating the 23 characters needed, in just 14 days. They took a holiday in Playa de los Pocillos, Lanzarote, and started to create the characters. Holland created the Beale and Fowler family, drawing on his own background. His mother, Ethel Holland, was one of four sisters raised in Walthamstow. Her eldest sister, Lou, had married a man named Albert Beale and had two children, named Peter and Pauline. These family members were the basis for Lou Beale, Pete Beale and Pauline Fowler. Holland also created Pauline's unemployed husband Arthur Fowler, their children Mark and Michelle, Pete's wife Kathy and their son Ian. Smith used her personal memories of East End residents she met when researching Victorian squares. Ethel Skinner was based on an old woman she met in a pub, with ill-fitting false teeth, and a "face to rival a neon sign", holding a Yorkshire Terrier in the other.

Other characters created included Jewish doctor Harold Legg, the Anglo-Cypriot Osman family (Ali, Sue and baby Hassan), black father and son Tony and Kelvin Carpenter, single mother Mary Smith and Bangladeshi couple Saeed and Naima Jeffery. Jack, Pearl and Tracey Watts were created to bring "flash, trash, and melodrama" to the Square (they were later renamed Den, Angie and Sharon). The characters of Andy O'Brien and Debbie Wilkins were created to show a modern couple with outwardly mobile pretensions, and Lofty Holloway to show an outsider; someone who did not fit in with other residents. It was decided that he would be a former soldier, as Holland's personal experiences of ex-soldiers were that they had trouble fitting into society after being in the army. When they compared the characters they had created, Smith and Holland realised they had created a cross-section of East End residents. The Beale and Fowler family represented the old families of the East End, who had always been there. The Osmans, Jefferys and Carpenters represented the more modern diverse ethnic community of the East End. Debbie, Andy and Mary represented more modern-day individuals.

Once they had decided on their 23 characters, they returned to London for a meeting with the BBC. Everyone agreed that ''EastEnders'' would be tough, violent on occasion, funny and sharp—set in Margaret Thatcher's Britain—and it would start with a bang (namely the death of Reg Cox). They decided that none of their existing characters were wicked enough to have killed Reg, so a 24th character, Nick Cotton was added to the line-up. He was a racist thug, who often tried to lead other young characters astray. When all the characters had been created, Smith and Holland set about casting the actors, which also involved the input of lead director Matthew Robinson, who supervised auditions with the other directors at the outset, Vivienne Cozens and Peter Edwards.

Final preparations

Through the next few months, the set was growing rapidly at Elstree, and a composer and designer had been commissioned to create the title sequence. Simon May wrote the theme music and Alan Jeapes created the visuals. The visual images were taken from an aircraft flying over the East End of London at 1000 feet. Approximately 800 photographs were taken and pieced together to create one big image. The credits were later updated when the Millennium Dome was built.

The launch was delayed until February 1985 due to a delay in the chat show ''Wogan'', that was to be a part of the major revamp in BBC1's schedules. Smith was uneasy about the late start as ''EastEnders'' no longer had the winter months to build up a loyal following before the summer ratings lull. The press were invited to Elstree to meet the cast and see the lot, and stories immediately started circulating about the show, about a rivalry with ITV (who were launching their own market-based soap, ''Albion Market'') and about the private lives of the cast. Anticipation and rumour grew in equal measure until the first transmission at 7p.m. on 19 February 1985. Both Holland and Smith could not watch; they both instead returned to the place where it all began, Albertine's Wine Bar on Wood Lane. The next day, viewing figures were confirmed at 17million. The reviews were largely favourable, although, after three weeks on air, BBC1's early evening share had returned to the pre-''EastEnders'' figure of seven million, though ''EastEnders'' then climbed to highs of up to 23million later on in the year. Following the launch, both group discussions and telephone surveys were conducted to test audience reaction to early episodes.

1980s broadcast history

Press coverage of ''EastEnders'', which was already intense, went into overdrive once the show was broadcast. With public interest so high, the media began investigating the private lives of the show's popular stars. Within days, a scandalous headline appeared – "EASTENDERS STAR IS A KILLER". This referred to Leslie Grantham, and his prison sentence for the murder of a taxi driver in an attempted robbery nearly 20 years earlier. This shocking tell-all style set the tone for relations between Albert Square and the press for the next 20 years.

The show's first episode attracted some 17million viewers, and it continued to attract high viewing figures from then on. By Christmas 1985, the tabloids could not get enough of the soap. "Exclusives" about ''EastEnders'' storylines and the actors on the show became a staple of tabloid buyers' daily reading.

In 1987 the show featured th
first same-sex kiss on a British soap
when Colin Russell (Michael Cashman) kissed boyfriend Barry Clarke on the forehead. This was followed in January 1989, less than a year after legislation came into effect in the UK prohibiting the "promotion of homosexuality" by local authorities, by the first on-the-mouth gay kiss in a British soap when Colin kissed a new character, Guido Smith (Nicholas Donovan), an episode that was watched by 17 million people.

Writer Colin Brake suggested that 1989 was a year of big change for ''EastEnders'', both behind the cameras and in front of them. Original production designer, Keith Harris, left the show, and Holland and Smith both decided that the time had come to move on too; their final contribution coinciding with the exit of one of ''EastEnders most successful characters, Den Watts (Leslie Grantham). Producer Mike Gibbon was given the task of running the show and he enlisted the most experienced writers to take over the storylining of the programme, including Charlie Humphreys, Jane Hollowood and Tony McHale.

According to Brake, the departure of two of the soap's most popular characters, Den and Angie Watts (Anita Dobson), left a void in the programme, which needed to be filled. In addition, several other long-running characters left the show that year including Sue and Ali Osman (Sandy Ratcliff and Nejdet Salih) and their family; Donna Ludlow (Matilda Ziegler); Carmel Jackson (Judith Jacob