18-22 April

There’s something a little disturbing about reporters from the national press turning up in Albert Square.  I can just about cope with the reality of Walford bearing little resemblance to our reality as long as we accept that Walford is its own microscropic universe where once-in-a-lifetime tragedies happen every other week.  But when a BBC outside broadcast van turns up outside the Vic, a certain cognitive dissonance starts to creep in. Are we pretending that EastEnders takes place in the real world, then? In this strange plane of existence called Reality, it’s true that a recently bereaved mother swapping her dead baby for a live one would attract media attention. But in Reality, so would a pastor going insane, locking his wife in a cellar and killing a whole bunch of people, but I don’t remember seeing hide or hair of a reporter in Walford last July. In Reality, so would a high-profile murder case ending with the main suspect falling from a roof, but I don’t remember the Brannings being hounded by journalists back then.

And if we’re pretending that EastEnders takes place in Reality, would it not be slightly improbable that two women living on the same Square with astonishingly similar life stories would both give birth to baby boys on the same day, even if this meant one of them conceiving while the father was still in a coma? That both babies would be of a similar size, shape and general appearance, as well as wearing exactly the same baby gro, meaning that even those who spent time with each infant wouldn’t ask, ‘hang on a second, am I going mad or has he shrunk?’ The reporter who spoke to Whitney looked excited by the revelations he heard, but at no point did he looked shocked by the facts of the story or the insane amount of tragedy that can happen to one woman in two years.

One wonders what exactly goes through the mind of a journalist sent to cover a story in Albert Square.

14-18 March

It’s at times like this I remember why I love EastEnders.  When it’s bad, it can be the biggest pile of unwatchable dross on television; but when it’s good, it’s untouchable.

It’s sometimes difficult to remember while we’re watching Michael and Jack compete to see who has less personality; while we suffer through the fifteenth identical Kalfie scene in the space of a fortnight; while we wait for the inevitable and predictable – and dull – reunion of Max and Tanya; while we wonder if the Masoods are ever again going to get the screentime and storylines they deserve.  But when EastEnders really wants to, it’s capable of delivering shocking, gripping, tense, emotional drama, and they can do all this within a single ten-minute mini-episode as they showed us last Friday.

I’ve spent so much of the last six months or so moaning at EastEnders that I’ve almost forgotten how to praise it. 

21-25 February 2011

EastEnders doesn’t tend to do enigmatic new characters. New arrivals in Albert Square tend to enter with a bang, indulging in some petty crime, starting feuds with various Mitchells and hopping from bed to bed, the agenda obvious upfront; or they sidle in with a whimper, appearing completely ordinary until the day we discover their dark secret a few months down the line. They will have some sort of dark secret, of course. These are the rules. If they arrived a while ago and still appear ordinary, the dark secret has simply yet to come out. The only people you can trust in Walford are the thugs and the criminals; it is, quite literally, the quiet ones you need to watch out for.

But then Dr Yusef ‘Kobra’ Khan slithered his way onto our screens; smooth, charming, handsome and overflowing with the charisma and screen presence that certain other new arrivals are sadly lacking in – there was no Michael this week in EastEnders, which may have contributed hundred-fold to my enjoyment of these episodes – but clearly with an agenda. We just don’t know what it is yet. He’s seriously enigmatic. Textbook enigmatic.

Who is he? Is he as lovely and charming as he appears? Is he completely evil and out to destroy the Masoods? Does he want Zainab back? What happened to his first wife? Is it just me being paranoid, or is there something very odd about his relationship with his daughter? Could he be Syed’s real father? (I don’t know whether it’s just coincidence or a result of the grudge the writers seem to have taken against ever allowing Marc Elliott to appear in an episode, but the longer Yusef and Syed go without meeting or mentioning each other, the more convinced of potential parentage I become. We’re back in Unwritten Rules of Albert Square territory again. Okay, the dates as we know them don’t really work, but in a universe where a woman can conceive in July and give birth to a full-term baby in December, clearly the passage of time doesn’t work as it does in reality.)

14-18 February 2011

Ah Roxy, Roxy, Roxy.  Clearly a woman who has inherited the Mitchell taste in men, or complete lack thereof.  Her mother did, after all, marry Archie Mitchell – the most evil man in the history of soap – and has repeatedly slept by choice with both Phil Mitchell and Ian Beale.  (Actually, perhaps Glenda just needs to visit an optician.)  And then there’s Auntie Peg of course, who worked her way through an endless line of adulterers, rapists and child molesters during her time in Walford.  Compared to that, Roxy’s taste for men completely devoid of personality, charm or character is almost acceptable.  At least Sean, Jack and Dr Al were all pretty easy on the eyes though; the attraction of Michael Moon is still one of the great mysteries of Albert Square, much like the hordes of beautiful women who have thrown themselves at Phil or the fact that Ian has persuaded four actual women to marry him.  Possibly some sort of powerful pheromone, undetectable to the television viewer, is involved.

That’s right, we were treated to even more Michael this week while we continued to wait for a personality to emerge.  No one who orbited near that black hole of blank space came away unscathed.  Alfie, a character who hasn’t put a foot wrong since he came back became unwatchable as he bantered with the man who had knocked up his wife without a care in the world.  I didn’t think it was possible for Jack to bore me more than he already did, but I had forgotten how much the character benefits from being put with decent actors like Max and Ronnie.   And Roxy became even more selfish than usual this week, blowing off her best friend for a quick bunk-up with a man with the sex appeal of an amoeba.

Mind you, I can’t blame Roxy for wanting to avoid Christian this week, the mood he was in.  I don’t know what’s happened to Christian recently.  Once one of my absolute favourite people in Albert Square, he’s been a right moody git since New Year, acting like a sulky toddler throwing his toys out of the pram.  This week, on finding Roxy with Michael instead of meeting as arranged for lunch and a pregnancy test, he decided to blow up at both Roxy and Syed, accusing them of never wanting this child in the first place.  Well, yes, Christian.  You know that.  We know that.  Syed told you that.  This entire ridiculous situation is your own stupid fault for not listening to your boyfriend and taking your best friend’s drunken offer seriously.  Thank god the test was negative and we’re to be spared 9 months of ‘Who’s the Daddy?’ followed by the inevitable custody battle, though it does rather raise the question of what the point of the whole thing was.

7-11 February 2011

EastEnders was a bit depressing this week.

Actually, EastEnders is always a bit depressing.  This was one of those weeks where it managed to tip over – and not for the first time – into full-on wrist-slitting television, a black hole of bleak misery and despair from which there isn’t even the smallest chance of a tiny speck of light escaping to brighten the darkness.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m an EastEnders fan.  Have been most of my life.  I love a bit of pain and misery or I wouldn’t still be glued to my TV screen four times a week.  But – and call me crazy if you want – I like my pain and misery to happen in logical ways to characters I care about and/or be countered by a bit of light relief, hope or optimism.