(This post is part
of a series on the 14 Top TV Dramas You’ve Never Seen)
Coming in at Number 5 in our countdown of The Top TV
Dramas You’ve Never Seen, is EastEnders. The storyline is set in
Albert Square, in the fictional London borough of Walford, in the East End of
London. While tourists see the West End of London, with its shops and theater
district, the East End is where the hardworking middle class Londoners struggle
with day-to-day life.
EastEnders is one of the U.K.’s top rated shows and is seen
worldwide, including in Europe, Africa,
Asia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, England, and America. In the
U.S., EastEnders has been broadcast on BBC America, Dish Network, and many
local PBS stations (the latter often years behind current episodes). The show
has had several spin-offs. EastEnders specializes in "slice of life"
drama, often gritty, but always striving for realism. It has dealt head on with controversial
issues like teenage pregnancy, abortion, incest, alcoholism, drug abuse, euthanasia,
prostitution, mental illness, illiteracy, spousal abuse, AIDs, homosexuality, rape,
child abuse, Down’s Syndrome, and religion.
I’ve been watching EastEnders
since its debut in 1985. Ironically, I missed the first episode but have seen
every one since. Originally airing two, now four half-hour episodes a week,
that adds up to a lot of shows. It would be impossible for any show to maintain
the level of high quality drama seen in the miniseries or shorter runs on this
list. With nearly 4,500 episodes to date, you can expect many peaks and valleys
throughout the show’s run. When EastEnders slips, it is mediocre. But when it
shifts into high gear with a dramatic storyline, no one does drama better.
EastEnders has an enormous ensemble cast, with members often
leaving and returning years later. Multiple plotlines run simultaneously and
often intersect. The most dramatic episodes are usually the so-called “two-handers”
where an entire episode is devoted to interplay between two characters. For its
25th anniversary in February 2010, EastEnders broadcast a live episode in which a murderer’s
identity was revealed. Even the cast was kept in the dark about the culprit’s
identity until the final minutes of the broadcast.
I have mixed feelings about including EastEnders on the
list, since technically even though it’s an evening show, it’s considered a soap
opera. But where nighttime soaps like Dallas are melodrama with larger than
life characters and situations, EastEnders has always revolved around the prosaic lives of ordinary, working class people.
Oh, yes. I finally got a chance to watch the first episode earlier
this year… a quarter century after it first aired. Only two characters remain
from the show’s inception: Ian Beale and Tracey the barmaid. Ian has been a
major character, but Tracey has had all of five minutes worth of dialogue in
her 26-year stint on the show. She broke her long silence in 2008: when asked
by another character why she has been so quiet, she replied, she wants to keep
herself to herself because she thinks they're all "stark raving mad."
It’s impossible to select a single clip from 2,250 hours of
programming to represent the series, so the YouTube link below has an autoclip
function that will automatically display 107 clips viewers have chosen as the
show’s most dramatic scenes. Each clip has a brief summary below it to put it
in context.
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