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Why We Watch...EastEnders |
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In my head, there is such a thing as Social Assistance TV. These are the kind of programmes that feature characters much worse off than you. No matter how rough a day you've had at work, your world will never be as adversarial, doomed and claustrophobic than theirs.
After all, these are people who can only socialise in one pub, one curry house and one atmosphere-free wine bar. People who never take holidays besides visiting former neighbours. Who never learn from their mistakes. Compared to the pocket universe that's EastEnders, we're laughing. It really is a lesson that no reality-TV life-improving do-gooder presenter could possibly give.
I'd sworn off soaps ever since an inexplicable Crossroads habit in my student days, but got dragged into Albert Square in 1994 by a new flatmate. What was this? A soap that felt compulsively tacky, yet gutsy, even sexy, lurid and camp - Pat's earrings, Frank's leer, Sonia's trumpet, Ricky's inanity, Alsatian pet Wellard's comparative sophistication and star quality all combined to dazzling effect.
How comforting too to realise your own life would never be this complicated; just how many convoluted, incestuous relationships can one community boast? How many rivalries, bitch-slaps, punch-ups and letdowns before every single resident decides to go and live in Emmerdale, where at least there are sheep to worry?
Talking of which, what of the competition? Next to EastEnders, Corrie is too much like panto, Emmerdale too farcical, Hollyoaks too juvenile and Doctors too lame to even justifiably reside in this sentence.
Somehow, despite moments in Walford that plumbed the depths - let's just call them the "Ferrara years" and be done with it - you cared. We get to know these cockernee crocks more than folk in "proper" series that pull the quit-while-ahead trick, or get cancelled because nobody cares any more. You know 'Enders will never be cancelled. Not while Pat's earrings dangle.
Is EastEnders grim? Sure. Isn't the news? And Prime Suspect, which is regarded as Genius TV? Just because Phil Mitchell's life is as about as welcome as a cup of cold sick doesn't mean that he's not entertaining.
Let me take you back to a recent addition to the cast, Stacey's brother Sean - the most 'andsome conniving rogue since David Wicks. For me, the reason to stick around Albert Square often boils down to one scene - eg, how this boy was introduced. As the wind blew through Martin Fowler's stall flaps, the camera kept its distance before swooping down around Sean, escalating the tension, like Clint Eastwood entering a ghost town for a cold dish of revenge.
So what if the next scene was Jim polishing his shoes? It's EastEnders' way of mixing drama with the suds of everyday life that makes it tick. That, and the daily flouting of the seven deadly sins. Thou shalt not covet Ian's wife, that sort of thing. As if.
And then there's Dot Cotton, Walford's indefatigable icon, played by June Brown with both impeccable Shakespearean pathos and knowing cartoon camp. Good old Dot; I'm ever so grateful that she's living in Walford so that I don't have to. Really, no-one's fortunes should have to sink that low. Why do you think Sharon keeps leaving? But then again she keeps coming back. I know how she feels…
Martin Aston
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