Following the recent palaver about controversial storylines on EastEnders, are soaps going too far? The RTÉ Guide’s Donal O’Donoghue dips a toe into the suds.
The morning headline was the final straw. ‘Windsor Hits Out At EastEnders Plot’ I dropped my remote control in the cereal and accidentally zapped The Jeremy Kyle Show into my life. My God, I thought, as I desperately tried to ‘kill’ Kyle, is the Queen of England now getting embroiled in the biggest controversy to hit Soapland since, well, the last one. But no, mercifully, it was that other British Institution (and former Albert Square resident) Barbara Windsor, voicing her displeasure at the soap’s storyline, that plumbed the depths with the double whammy of a cot death and a baby swap over New Year’s Eve. ‘Shouldn’t be allowed!’ or some-such quoth Babs from a pantomime stage (oh yes she did!) joining an ever swelling chorus of disapproval.
Wake up and smell the Palmolive Babs, EastEnders has about as much to do with the real world as The Jeremy Kyle Show. But then that has never stopped the public from getting into a lather over make-believe characters. Long after Colin and Barry gave us the first pre-watershed-soap-gay-kiss, EastEnders continues to fly the flag. At the beginning of the year the show had viewers brandishing pitchforks and flaming torches outside Castle Beeb. The reason? Ronnie Branning went and nicked Kat Slater’s new born baby after her own child died as a result of a cot death. Despite it going out amid the fizzy distraction of New Year’s Eve celebrations, the public noticed. Tens of thousands of viewers contacted the BBC to complain, tabloid newspapers gleefully shrieked their horror (‘EastEnders Forced Me To Relive My Baby Hell’) and broadsheets got in on the act, by offering up polemical pieces to fan the flames.
Readers, the clue to why this is over-reaction is in the genre description. Soaps are a bubble bath of fiction posing as everyday life. That’s why millions tune and why they get so animated when soaps lose the plot. This is not art imitating life or even life imitating art, it’s really a case of life but not as we know it. Otherwise we’d have trains crashing into living rooms, serial killers as neighbours, people coming back to life and your man from Boyzone working down the local boozer. Check any map or tap into a sat-nav system and it’s unlikely that you’ll be getting directions for Albert Square, Emmerdale, Coronation Street or Carrigstown. Here be myths and monsters and the rules of this world do not apply. The rules of drama and screenwriting do and occasionally the writers get their wires crossed or worse.
When they’re on the money, soaps can hit the jackpot. When screechy Deirdre Barlow was sent down it became a cause celebre, with tee-shirts demanding freedom for The Weatherfield One and a concerned MP raising the matter in the British Parliament. Over in Brookside Close the murder of evil Trevor Jordache by his long-suffering family was not only acclaimed as ‘soap’s most dramatic death’ but the eventual arrests resulted in protests outside the Channel 4 studios and The Mirror demanding ‘Free The Brookside Two!’. But just as often the writers have mistimed the tackle or miscued the moment. Last year Coronation Street pulled the plug on an episode chronicling a shotgun siege as it was due to be broadcast in the same week that a gunman shot 12 people in Cumbria. In 2009 Hollyoaks re-edited a number of episodes that bore striking parallels to the murder of 2-year-old Jamie Bulger.
The trick is to keep it real – but not too much - and the magic of any soap is that no matter how long you’ve been away from it, it only takes an episode of two to get back in the picture. I spent most of December glued to a pumped-up Coronation Street, celebrating its 50th anniversary with a fusillade of stories in which anything went (including a couple of cast members and half the street). But even when the train came off the tracks, the storylines never seemed likely to derail, churning out murder, attempted murder, heroism and infidelity in thrilling staccato. That month of mayhem set the melodrama bar very high and EastEnders, which has long traded on being grittier than the rest, probably figured it was time to flex its muscles.
It’s grim down south. It always has been since the show’s debut in 1985, when EastEnders was adamant it belonged in the grimier end of the bathtub. Before the baby brouhaha, the show was already causing a stir with Muslims eating during Ramadan and not paying due respect to the Koran. Just to balance the books, Christians also complained, following the portrayal of preacher-turned-murderer, Lucas. Production teams will counter by saying it’s all about ratings, but shooting with both barrels doesn’t guarantee you will hit the target. Or to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, who if he was around today would surely be earning a crust stirring it up on TV: “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral soap. Soaps are either well written or badly written. That is all.”
Soap stories that shocked the nation
Hot For Teacher
(Fair City 2004)
It was one of the hottest stories in Fair City in recent years and resulted in one of the most controversial RTÉ Guide covers ever. It happened when English teacher Sorcha gave Leaving Cert pupil Ross a few extracurricular grinds (and we’re not just talking about the poems of Paddy Kavanagh!). This teacher-pupil fling raised a few eyebrows, especially when the controversial lovers get up close and personal for the cover picture of the RTÉ Guide. Three years later Corrie entered the illicit blackboard jungle when Rosie Stape stood too close to her Teech, John Stape.
Gay Kiss on Albert Square
(EastEnders 1987)
When Colin snogged Barry, it was soap’s first gay kiss and the world went crazy. Or at least the tabloid version got all hot and bovvered. The Sun dubbed the show ‘EastBenders’ and soap soothsayers proclaimed that the end of the world was nigh. Twenty-three years, the show’s scriptwriters gave us a variation on the theme with the Gay Muslim lovers of Christian and Syed. So far there has been barely a peep from the public. Plus ca change!
The Family Way
(Brookside, 1996)
“A scene like that in a family programme watched by children is going too far,” said Mary ‘Watchdog’ Whitehouse of the moment that siblings Nat and Georgia are caught cuddling in bed by their younger brother. Series creator Phil Redmond trumpeted it as breaking the last TV taboo but the Independent Television Commission slapped the programme makers on the wrist and ordered them to broadcast an apology.
Toyah Battersby Rape
(Coronation Street, 2007)
In a 45 minute special, broadcast on Good Friday, barmaid Toyah Battersby was brutally raped down a dark alleyway in Weatherfield. Former cast members were not impressed. “A lot of children watch the show and rape is no fit subject for youngsters,” said Jean Alexander, who had played Hilda Ogden. Georgia Taylor, who played Battersby admitted to being emotionally drained by a story that was teased out over weeks.
Donal O’Donoghue
