EastEnders: ‘Stop rearranging the deck chairs and undertake a full inspection of the ship.’

ATV Today Editor Shaun Linden looks at the recent woes of the once-mighty Beeb soap opera.

There was a time that becoming executive producer of EastEnders was seen as one of the top jobs in broadcasting. The chance to make your mark in television drama and shape the output of a show watched by millions week in week out.

A decline in viewership in recent years has seen all soap operas take a hit. The once-loyal fans have drifted off and a failure for soaps to attract new viewers means it’s inevitable one day that soap operas will cease to exist.

There’s one soap that’s accelerating so fast into the abyss that today’s announcement of a change of leader is like that old saying; rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. EastEnders, once BBC One’s anchor of an evening, announced today that exec producer of three years, Jon Sen, is to leave.

Sen will be replaced by Chris Clenshaw. Chris previously worked on the show in the story department and has been instrumental in stories that have played out in the last decade. It raises questions whether someone who previously worked on the show when it was considered at an ‘all time low’ can save it now it’s a new ‘all time low’.

Changing the executive producer is something that’s done quite regularly in all soaps. It seems at EastEnders it happens more as a reaction to a new drop-in ratings rather than to keep it fresh. It’s time the BBC took a bigger look at EastEnders. They need to begin by asking themselves – do they actually want EastEnders?

Blaming the executive producer is easy for fans and critics, but both houses need looking at.

The first house is the EastEnders team themselves. There’s a complete lack of investment with characters and a complete disregard for the history of legacy characters. Having Sharon Watts trying to kill her best friend Ian Beale by poisoning him, a partnership of 35 years, is an example of not understanding character history.

The story came from the death of Dennis, Sharon’s son. You can’t fault EastEnders for the shock factor of the killing of Dennis – but why do that to Sharon, a character that viewers have grown up with and knew all about her trouble of having children in the first place? Killing Dennis left a void in Sharon as a character and left her without purpose. Yes, she has a baby son and an older brother who turned up this year, but why break that legacy link she had with Dennis and the link he had being part of a legacy family in EastEnders?

The team loves to preach. They love to project that they are at the forefront of tackling the social issues of the day. Now there’s nothing wrong in tackling social issues, but this has always been done, but back in the day, there wouldn’t be ‘look at how wonderful we are’ approach to it. It would just happen on screen. It would happen because it fits with the characters.

The domestic abuse storyline involving Gray and Chantelle is a classic example of what I’ve explained. The storyline worked up until Gray killed Chantelle. The press office decided to reveal a week before that Chantelle would be killed and claimed they had to do this so viewers who may be in a similar domestic set-up weren’t triggered.

The issue I had at the time was you’ve had Gray attack Chantelle several times. In fact, every soap, every day, has scenes that could trigger people. I believed at the time the revelation of Chantelle’s death was purely to get viewers in. I was attacked online and even had the press department berating me for making such claims.

I’ve been vindicated though. Since then we’ve had Gray apparently kill Tina and also kill Kush by pushing him in front of a tube train. We’ve also had him lose his father and see the emotions he’s going through with that.

Most domestic abusers aren’t serial killers though. It’s an insult to viewers to see Gray go on to kill but more bizarrely keep him on screen in scenes in which viewers can emotionally connect with him. It feels at times there’s a redemption arc going on.

That’s just two factors in the team house where not investing in new and legacy characters has a significant effect on maintaining fans interest. For me, there are two types of storylines in soaps; Character and Event. When you’ve got a shoddy investment in the character, an event just won’t have the impact that bosses are looking for.

The second house that needs looking at is the BBC management. Why aren’t BBC One and other BBC channels promoting EastEnders more? Why isn’t there more engagement from the cast with the public? The BBC need to realise it’s not 1998 and people will just turn in automatically. They need to get out there and sing from the rooftops – we are here!

When EastEnders returned from its break due to Covid, you’d have thought the BBC would have pulled out all the stops to get viewers back. But no, they didn’t. The first failure was shorter episodes. What was the point of that given the current scheduling blocks that BBC One works with? I understand that a reduction was needed because of Covid restrictions, but then you should have done three, thirty-minute episodes rather than 20-minute episodes.

That leads me onto the scheduler for BBC One. Viewers on weekdays work with 30 minute or 1-hour programmes (usually). So having EastEnders starting at :05 or :10 was going to impact the show greatly. It has become a habit for certain viewers to switch from Coronation Street on a Monday 8pm to BBC One for EastEnders. However, over the past year, it can start as late as 8.10pm. Are you really going to sit and wait 10 minutes?

The failure to understand that for some viewers, familiarity is key, is quite shocking for people who work in television. You know the sort, the sort that looks down on someone like me. What do I know, what do the fans know? I’ll tell you – we know what we like, we know what works and we know what we don’t like.

The push for iPlayer and the insistence that iPlayer accounts for a big number of its total viewership (often disputed by some) I think indicates where the show is headed. For the time being, EastEnders once again has a new exec but will both houses of the show come together to work for the good of the show before it’s too late?

This is an opinion piece by Shaun Linden, Editor of ATV Today.