Analysing EastEnders' 15th Anniversary: The Family Album
Reviewed by Ian Jones - Sunday 13/02/00, BBC1
Editor's note: The following comes courtesy of the website
OffTheTelly.co.uk, and covers a period of EastEnders history (about
five to seven years ago) that is still somewhat familiar to U.S. fans
who watch via public television.
Scurrying along in the wake of Monty Python's 30th, Not the Nine
O'clock News (and Newsnight)'s 20th and The Simpsons' 10th, comes the
flags-and-bunting jamboree that is EastEnders' 15th birthday; a
bizarre anniversary to mark in itself, and one that compounds the
impression of television retrospective celebrations coming round on an
almost weekly basis.
'In-house' tributes to series that are still being made, such as
this one, all suffer from the necessity to disguise the fact that the
programme in question is quite simply not as good today as it used to
be – never mind whether this is grounded in truth or simply the
distorted impression of the passing of time tricking us into
remembering something as being better in 'the good old days'. It means
that a substantial chunk of the tribute has to be taken up with a
phalanx of on-message, contemporary cast members twittering in unison
about how, in this case, EastEnders has this remarkable ability to
remain as innovative, engaging, controversial blah blah blah as it
ever was. The veterans (Wendy Richard, Adam Woodyatt) are stapled down
and prodded into uttering some pithy, sycophantic sound bite (Richard:
"It's essentially a team show, it is all teamwork and we are a jolly
good team ... at the end of the day we are all there for each other")
which, because it is coming from one of the 'originals', is supposed
to then support what all the infants are uttering and confirm that the
programme is indeed going from strength to strength.
It takes a scales-falling-from-the-eyes kind of conversion that
accompanies kicking the soap addiction to destroy a huge wall of
prejudice that has been clouding your perception of that soap all the
whiletime you continued to tune in.
In an instant you've realised you don't need this programme in
your life anymore; you can then go on to ask yourself why, what it is
that has changed and let you down. This happened to me a couple of
years ago; letting go was ultimately very painless. I quickly saw both
what it was that was present at that time whichthat was making the
series so lifeless and unengaging – and therefore also what it was I
had valued so greatly in the past; you wait for that magic to return,
but if nothing happens you can only wait so long.
This 'tribute' to EastEnders helped to articulate for me and
underscore my twin conclusions as to what is wrong with the programme
today, and what was great about it in the past. A rather lightweight,
poorly edited and researched, one-dimensional documentary consequently
ended up helping me order and rationalise my mind — but not in the way
the current EastEnders regime intended.
What we were shown was a once-great giant of sociopolitical
realist drama, built on an overpowering aesthetic and linguistic
authenticity, hitting great heights of TV drama due to its integrity –
integrity to such key tenets as rounded, consistent characterisations,
an ear for naturalistic, moving dialogue in even the most mundane and
ritualistic of settings, and figures themselves who remarkably were at
the same time crucibles for a nation's projected wants and needs and
catalysts reacting to and against plots and incidents emphasising the
drama in the everyday. The climaxes and showdowns, which a tribute
like this one concentrated solely on, were contained within such a
framework of integrity and of not patronising the audience.
That integrity is now shot to pieces as the series has withered
and paled; our expectations have been lowered to such an extent that
EastEnders can only be 'good' and television worth talking about
unless it has one such climax and showdown virtually every fortnight.
We are patronised with images of cod Kray twins and their Carry On
mother, Terry and June-esque bickering couples, 'misunderstood' youths
.… Where is the humour and tragedy in the banal, the everyday, the way
people talked to themselves and one another, which was once its
strongest points? Discarded in the name of ratings and of generating
tabloid interest and publicity.
This was typified in this tribute by the way the lame voice-over,
appallingly delivered by Linda Robson, had the gall to dub as "less
infamous" the circumstances in which a whole host of key characters
left the series, including James Willmott-Brown, Mary, Dr Legg, Joe,
Colin, and, incredibly, both Ali and Sue Osman. Similarly we had a
cascade of vox pops from current stars, including a ludicrous plethora
of waffle from Martin Kemp, but co-creator Tony Holland appeared for
just 15 seconds, and Michael Grade even less.
But there again, a tribute such as this will, by its very
existence and purpose, always fail: and this is simply because of its
purpose, the fact that everything has to be filtered through the prism
of the here and now, the present, the New Model EE, so the past and
the programme's history must seem to either look forward to,
complement or pale into insignificance next to the programme as it is
today — today's EastEnders has to be appear better than the past to
justify it continuing, to make us tune in for the next episode, and to
ensure it remains an important ratings winner for the post-Birt BBC.
Hence, the tribute could not make any mention of great slews of
vital key storylines such as Kathy's rape by Wilmott-Brown, Den's long
stretch on the run and in prison, Michelle's abortion, Angie's
attempted suicide, Michelle revealing the father of her child to
Sharon, and many many more. Ethel might just as well never had
existed, Lou turned up in a ridiculous cameo at the end, and so on.
A tribute like this propagates a certain reading of EastEnders'
past, leading us to mediate our response to it on telly today in the
light of an awful revisionist past where 'Dirty' Den was a scheming
hoodlum, Cindy a betraying harlot, Ian a helpless victim, Dot a poor
fool always being poisoned by her son — a dangerous, problematic
distortion, and one that really is something worth talking about.
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