Danny Dyer: East End Boy by Allan Joe

Author:Allan, Joe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782432975
Publisher: Michael O'Mara
Published: 2014-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

HEADING EAST

When EastEnders’ newly appointed executive producer, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, agreed to return to the show after a three-year absence, he already had a fairly good idea of what it needed to do to pull itself out of a rating slump. He told the Radio Times, ‘When EastEnders is at its best, it changes the world a little bit. EastEnders isn’t about propaganda, but it is about life, which makes it a very powerful show.’ Away from the soap, as an interested outsider, he had watched as, in his eyes, his beloved EastEnders had lost much of that power, suffering an inexorable decline over the previous sixteen months.

Over the years, EastEnders had earned its place at the top of the weekly television ratings with an exciting mix of explosive storylines and authentic family drama, enjoying along the way its fair share of headline-grabbing press coverage. But by the start of 2013, things were starting to feel decidedly stale and the show was beginning to look more like a parody of itself than must-see TV. Newman’s reign had been cut short when column inches, and more importantly, viewing figures, had started to decline. As David Brown commented in a Radio Times article in early 2014, ‘Once upon a time, the show’s tagline was “Everybody’s talking about it”. In 2013, nobody was, except to say how dull it had become.’ Treadwell-Collins was determined to stop the rot, and his reign as showrunner would launch under the banner, ‘Everything’s about to change’. He had a plan. He was going to look back to the golden years of the soap – its 1980s and 1990s heyday – and bring back some of that old magic.

Treadwell-Collins recalled his early fascination with the show in the same interview with the Radio Times: ‘I’d never felt an affinity with Coronation Street . . . I liked EastEnders because it felt dangerous, real and naughty, and also that it was saying something about life.’ Part of the affinity Treadwell-Collins felt could have been geographic, he explained. ‘I grew up in Radlett in Hertfordshire, which is about ten minutes down the road from where EastEnders is filmed in Elstree, and I’d go along to the studio and stick my head through the gates.’ When the show began in 1985, Treadwell-Collins was only eight years-old, but undoubtedly he was as enthralled as the rest of the UK when the BBC launched its first primetime evening soap. The hype promised a unique mix of everyday family issues and a level of gritty realism that had long since evaporated from the cobbled streets of Weatherfield – Coronation Street’s fictional home.

EastEnders’ first episode, broadcast on 19 February 1985, pulled in an audience of 17 million viewers, and within the space of two years the show had become a permanent fixture as the nation’s favourite. The Christmas Day episode that aired in 1986 climaxed with the owners of the Queen Vic, Den and Angie Watts (as played by Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson), finally ending their tempestuous marriage as Den handed Angie divorce papers.

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