Watching EastEnders in the U.K., Five Times A Week
By Mackenzie Lambert Wood
One of the best things about living in the U.K., for
me at least, is being able to watch EastEnders four
nights during the week(as well as Sunday Omnibus
recap) and knowing that they are current episodes.
When EastEnders was first shown on PBS in the
U.S., I was living in Dallas, and the local station
didn’t carry it. Fortunately, it was being shown in
the Washington, D.C. area where my father lived at the
time, and he agreed to tape the show for me, sending
them out a few at a time. I was hooked on the show
immediately, and especially liked the fact that I
never knew what was going to happen next, no plot line
leaks and no magazines with blazing headlines that you
couldn’t miss.
The show did eventually come to PBS in Dallas,
but I continued getting the tapes from my dad, as
these were further along in the plots. In 1989, I
travelled to the U.K. for the first time and talked my
way into a private tour of the BBC Elstree studio,
including the EastEnders sets. This just added to my
love of the show, seeing how the sets looked up close
and meeting some of the cast members.
In the 1990s, I left Dallas and travelled around
the U.S. for several years, losing touch with the show
a bit. I tried to keep up with it on the Internet and
through letters from British friends but was really
pleased to find that when I settled in Los Angeles,
BBC America was carrying the show. I was also still
getting newspaper clippings and soap magazines from
friends in the U.K., so I was also clued in on
upcoming plot lines, which was sometimes not a good
thing. I missed the days of getting the tapes in the
mail from my dad, where I could watch several hours at
a time, not knowing what was going to happen next or
who was going to end up getting the duff- duff.
When I met my husband, Ed, he was already a fan
of both Emmerdale and Coronation Street but had never
really watched EastEnders. During the time that we
were long- distance dating, EastEnders was taken off
the schedule on BBCA, so Ed offered to tape the show
for me. He bought me an international VCR that would
play tapes from Europe, and started sending me tapes
of the show, along with other British programmes.
Since I had friends in the U.K. who watched the show,
I could ask them about characters I wasnít familiar
with until I was caught up to storylines. This worked
also when I finally moved to England and was watching
the showís first- run episodes. I am back to being
able to watch the show faithfully. This has also made
a fan out of my husband, as he will sit with me while
the show is on and has gotten interested in most of
the plot lines. Not only do I get the pleasure of
seeing EastEnders five times a week, but I also get to
share it with my husband. The only thing that I could
ask for now is for the national papers and magazines
here to stop giving away story lines and spoiling the
surprise many viewers used to feel. I do my best to
avert my eyes from the newsstands, but sometimes it
can’t be avoided. I do miss the days when I was so
shocked by a plot twist that I would shout ‘What?!’ at
the television screen, but I think I can learn to live
with that.
Back to Latest Articles