When did Eastenders really start to go down the pan?

A few years ago the BBC uploaded a big chunk of the early 1985 episodes from Eastenders from the pilot onwards to youtube (the last episode they uploaded was where Nick Cotton had raided Kathy Beale's confidential medical records and was going to blackmail her with it).

And I have to say, I quickly became quite hooked on those old episodes. Whilst some of it was quite an awkward set-up and there were characters who didn't really work (like Mary and Lofty), a lot of it was a refreshing contrast to what the soap later became. It largely felt like a real vibrant community of actual community-minded people, rather than a bunch of contrived dysfunctional meatheads as stupid and belligerent as the storylines require. Some of the writing was very sharp indeed and there was a real heart to a lot of it, or at least there was a lot of nuances.

I could quickly understand why it became such a popular soap so quickly, whereas by the 2000's it just seemed to be watched simply either out of habit or for the car crash viewing effect.

I think this article by Spiked largely chimes with my impressions of comparing the soap then and now.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2010/01/22/who-killed-eastenders-2/

So where did it begin to go to pot? The arrival of the Slaters? That stupid episode where Alfie spends the whole half hour trying to find a late night shop that sells condoms? When they killed off Dirty Den (for the first or second time)? Or was it day one?

96/97 ish. That's when I stopped watching. You had the Ireland episodes, the Ian Beale murder plot, etc.

I did watch it early on but I think I stopped in the mid 90s. I had a brief flirtation with it again in the noughties when Grantham / Dirty Den briefly returned but they quickly killed him off when he got caught downloading porn or sthg. And I have never gone back to it. Its too dreary and miserable in my view.
Now I tend to avoid soap operas generally otherwise I would get addicted and never stop.
The same could be said of my liking of Doctor Who aswell but then Chibnall is curing me of that addiction these days.

stengos wrote:Now I tend to avoid soap operas generally otherwise I would get addicted and never stop.

I know what you mean. Even when Eastenders is bad, it still has that strangely addictive effect.

I remember being hooked by the Sharongate storyline back in the day, and again by the Steve/Matthew/Saskia business. I sometimes think it should've ended when Matthew got his revenge.

And then I don't know what happened. It was always a grim show in the 90's, but it seemed to become a lot more bombarding and confrontational in its depressing effect in the 2000s. I think confrontations and mean outbursts used to punctuate the drama of the show, but now it had come to define every bloody interaction and scene. And the characters who used to seem to have some heart to them, like Pauline Fowler and Phil Mitchell just became increasingly mean-spirited, spiteful, nasty versions of themselves.

It also seemed to get incredibly ridiculous and stupid in the 2000s, and often felt like a bunch of drunk teenagers were writing the show and thought such and such a funny hi-jink would be a good idea.

I *did* get hooked on the Kat-Zoe storyline, but it was still pretty shit, a lot of it. The nadir moment of it for me was when Zoe tells the father that Kat was abused by her uncle. Kat's sobbing in her room, and all the father does is bang on her door demanding to know if it's true, then he runs out, beats his brother up and then comes back and continues to nurse after Zoe.

It would make more sense for him to comfort Kat, but then the storyline couldn't contrive to have a neglected Kat make a suicide attempt while no-one in the family even notices. There also seems to be some coagulated idea that of course the father would handle it wrongly, without understanding because that's what's wrong with men.

And the same seemed true of Zoe's running away storyline. I just couldn't buy that she didn't turn back and go home the moment things got sinister with that female pimp trying to groom her. But she stays in that predicament because the soap wants to explore the bloody issue.

The problem is the BBC seemed to become exponentially proud of the show and this storyline, and it became clear that if the Doctor Who revival was going to please BBC bosses, it had to be made more like this and less like what Big Finish were doing so well.

Since 1985.

I haven't seen it since Frank Butcher was written out.
RICKAYYY!!!

Ludders wrote:I haven't seen it since Frank Butcher was written out.
RICKAYYY!!!

"Don't start that lark again!"

He was the only reason to watch it.
I was never a big EE fan, but I'd probably happily watch 70s episodes of Coronation Street just for the nostalgia. Lol

I think that there's an overall problem with the core identity of soap dramas as a whole. The thing is that all soaps are plot-driven, but they have to revert themselves back into a somewhat status quo because of viewers tuning in and out, and just view it as junk food TV, something to just gossip about in one generation, and then the next will gossip about the same exact thing. Lots of the viewer base won't actually watch every single episode, because they fundamentally view soaps as something to dip in and out of. That's why in recent times, I noticed that characters will do a little recap on a past storyline, they say it in the most clunky and expository way possible, to the point that it does not sound like actual dialogue at all, but it has to be done like that, to fit the viewers that dip in and out, rather than the ones who have been watching extensively. There's similar storylines that just happen within a few weeks of each other (someone is cheating on their partner, a business is about to go awry, etc), characters that get completely changed up despite having opposite character traits over a couple of months, and the formula gets reset. Eastenders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks (to some extent) all have this problem.

That said, I do enjoy Soaps to a certain extent. The reason that I watched Corrie and Emmerdale extensively was because the storylines that they did present managed to show proper moral grey areas. I started a story where a guy named Tyrone got physically and mentally abused by his trigger happy girlfriend named Kirsty, to the point that he was afraid of leaving het and his baby being hurt by her. Likewise, there was another story where a cafe owner named Roy and his transgender wife named Hayley are forced into a dilemma, when Hayley gets cancer, and she requests that Roy kills her so she doesn't have to suffer. I loved both of these storylines because they both got me thinking, especially since I was a young age (yeah seeing that domestic abuse story was tough for 12 year old me to see, but it shows that the writers did their job well), they made me leaving questions about morality (like Tyrone having a secret affair after all the abuse, because 12 year old me made me question if it was wrong, because of all the abuse that he had suffered through), and by enlarge, I kept on watching the show, even during now, where I get frustrated by the static soap formula, because I know that soaps can strive to become more, and I enjoy the characters that don't act out of character to fit the static soap formula, like Roy, Tyrone, David Platt and Sally Webster. But soaps are just held back by their own formula at the end of the day, and I don't think that they could ever be fixed, or strive to become better.

I can remember when the best actors in Emmerdale (Farm) were the sheep.

Ludders wrote:He was the only reason to watch it.

Plus we wouldn't have had Dave Angel without him.

I don't really do soaps anymore. I enjoyed some Aussie soaps in the 80s and early 90s, and Melrose Place was fun trash in the 90s, but that's about where they stopped. The problem with soaps is they're not about anything other than the characters, yet are designed to run indefinitely, which inevitably ends up with the characters you invested in fucking off and are then stuck watching a bunch of randoms who you wouldn't have started watching the show for if that had been how it was before.
Screw that shit.

I love the old version of the theme.



Beautiful 80's music.

I'm probably the only person who liked the short-lived smooth jazz version they used for about a year in the early 90s.

It's honestly fine. 1:41-2:17 is magical.