EastEnders

Inception

In February 1983, two years before EastEnders hit the screen, the show was nothing more than 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 ITV was getting with Coronation Street.

Related Topics:
February - 1983 - BBC One - ITV - Coronation Street

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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. Smith and Holland went away scratching their heads. Why did the BBC want to fill the already-full schedules with a new soap? Little did they know just how popular it would become.

Related Topics:
Julia Smith - Tony Holland - Script editor - Z-Cars

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There was anxiety at first that the viewing public would not accept a new soap set in the south of England.

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Smith and Holland were both Londoners — Holland was from a big East End family, but when they researched Victoria Square they found massive changes in areas they thought they knew well. However, delving further into the East End, 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 Holland and Smith summed up as 'Hurt one of us and you hurt us all'.

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The target launch date was January 1985 when BBC One was planning a major revamp in its schedules. Julia Smith and Tony Holland had just 11 months in which to write, cast and shoot the whole thing. However, in February 1984 they didn't even have a title or a place to film. The project had a number of working titles — Square Dance, Round the Square, Round the Houses, London Pride, East 8. It was the latter that stuck (E8 is the postcode for Hackney) in the early months of creative process.

Related Topics:
February - 1984 - Postcode - Hackney

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After they decided of the filming location (Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire), Smith and Holland set about creating the 24 characters needed in just 14 days. Once they decided on these they returned to London for a meeting with the BBC. Everyone was in agreement, East 8 was to be tough, violent on occasion, funny and sharp - and it would start with a bang.

Related Topics:
Elstree Studios - Hertfordshire

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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 (music) and Alan Jeapes (visuals) created it, and it remains one of the strongest title clips in television.

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The BBC One relaunch was delayed until February 1985. The press were invited to see Elstree and 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 7pm on 19 February 1985. Both Holland and Smith could not watch, they both instead returned to the place where it all began. The next day viewing figures were confirmed at 17 million. The reviews were largely favourable, and viewing figures remained high. Press coverage, already intense, went into overdrive. Within weeks the headline they had all dreaded had appeared — EASTENDERS STAR IS A KILLER. This referred to Leslie Grantham, and set the tone for relations between the Albert Square and the press for the next 20 years. By Christmas of 1985, the tabloids couldn't get enough of the show. 'Exclusives' about EastEnders storylines became a staple of tabloid buyers daily reading.

Related Topics:
February - 1985 - ITV - Albion Market - 19 February - Leslie Grantham - Albert Square

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But the real story, of 20 years of accelerating production, of characters' highs and lows, of controversial storylines and off-screen scandals had only just begun...

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