Eastenders - How did it all start?

EastEnders consists of seven main families, and is set in a cul-de-sac fictional borough in East London. The series mainly centres around the residents of Albert Square and Victorian square of terraced houses, and its neighbouring streets, such as Bridge Street, Turpin Road and George Street, which comprises of a pub, street market, night club, community centre, café and various small businesses, as well as a park and allotments.

Here is the EastEnders family tree, including casts that currently are in the show, and also those that are not:

Tony Holland created and developed EastEnders. He wanted a large extended family to be a primary focus of EastEnders, a representative of the type primarily found in the East End of London. Holland grew up in London with a large family himself, and he was able to use his own experiences to inspire EastEnders central clan the Beales and the Fowlers in creating some of the shows characters. Holland used family stories of his past and present when creating stories and characters. His aunt Lou Beale produced the EastEnders character of the same name, as well as her two children Peter (Pete) and Pauline. Also, to create the dynamic pairing of Den and Angie Watts, the owners of the Queen Victoria, Holland used some of his experience as a barman in London’s pubs and clubs. 

As we can see, Tony Holland used his own experience to actually come up with the idea of creating a soap. The location, family stories, community, ect, was all something he brought into the soap from his own life. Similarly, I think that when creating my group soap, it would be best to base the soap around our everyday environment, which is in the North of London. As I am a student, and so are my group members, we spend majority of our time in school (sixth form), therefore from this research, I feel that it would be more easier to establish social realism if we base our soap in the school environment of North London.

Main Conventions of Soap Operas

Before we even begin to start planning our soap trailer, it is essential for us to be aware of the typical conventions of a soap opera.
Below are a few conventions that are found in soap operas:

1.       Soap operas are serialised drama that usually runs throughout the year, week-in, week-out.

2.       Continuous narratives are proposed which deal with domestic themes and personal relationships.

3.       It normally has a well-recognised theme tune and introduction sequence which has only changed slightly over the years.

4.       There is a limit to the number of characters shown at any one time, even though the casts for soap operas tend to be larger than for drama series. This allows more time to be spent proposing each character as a smaller number of them are shown, thus the audience will engage with the character s better and the storylines are able to be more detailed, as well as there being several over time.

5.       The plots in soap operas are open-ended and many stories are told or even interlinked in an episode, often following the same issue. For example, the soap may show a break-up of a relationship, showing the two characters dealing with it. In these cases, stories run parallel.

6.       The setting is often around a small, central area. For example, a square, such as EastEnders, or a cul-de-sac, such as Brookside.

7.       For events taking place in the real world such as Christmas or the Millennium, soaps often show special episodes. Some of these episodes bring in long-departed characters, or current characters that travel to a location which is not where their usual surrounding is. These episodes are often acknowledged as ‘soap bubbles’ as they usually do not have much of an impact on the on-going stories of the usual show.

8.       Common, ordinary, working-class characters are mostly proposed in British soaps, in contrast to American soaps, where richer, flashier, more fantasy-inspired characters are proposed. This reflects the preferences of their target audience.

9.       British soaps focus on realism and aim to display a realistic story

10.   Many storylines will be in progress in the duration of one episode, with the action switching between them. After one narrative is resolved, a completely different one with different characters will already be in progress.

11.   There is usually a ‘hook’ to begin an episode in a soap in which narratives from the previous episode are continued. The end of the episode will be a ‘cliff-hanger’, which leaves the audience questioning themselves on what will happen next.

The purpose in making note of the conventions in soap operas is so that I can look back at these for reference when planning my own thriller. My aim is to use as many of these conventions in my soap trailer in order to create an effective final product, which consists of all the vital elements needed to display the soap genre.

What is a Soap Opera?

A soap opera is an ongoing work of fiction, which is episodic and is portrayed in serial format on television or radio. The name ‘soap opera’ originates from the original serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers such as Colgate-Palmolive as sponsors and producers. These early radio series were broadcast during the day at weekdays when housewives would be the most listeners; hence the series were aimed at and consumed mainly by a female audience.

Soap operas are stories proposed over a long extended period, where different characters are presented at different times. It is not likely for soaps to comprise a quick wrap-up of a storyline, and it is most likely a storyline consists of several characters with possible connections to other stories. The most common trait of a soap opera may be that each ending of an episode promises the audience for more drama in the next episode, rather than a clean tie-up at the end of the episode’s story, which is more of the case with sitcoms or other dramas.

Before creating a soap opera, we must first understand what a soap opera is. Therefore, I decided to have my first post as “What is a soap opera?” to explain exactly what it is. This is helpful towards developing my own soap opera as I now know exactly what I am going to be creating.