Rickaaay!

EastEnders is the BBC’s flagship drama. No matter how many Jane Austen or Charles Dickens novels they continue to adapt the bread and butter of the BBC’s drama output is EastEnders.

There it stands like a behemoth in the TV schedules with four pristine 30-minute prime-time slots on weekday evenings, plus an omnibus on Sundays and all manner of repeats and offshoot shows on BBC3. Just on BBC1 it accounts for four hours of TV every week, that’s 208 hours every year…

But, sadly, unlike the expensively produced bodice-rippers that the Beeb’s commissioning editors produce with one eye on promotion and the other on industry acclaim, the old Walford warhorse doesn’t seem to get anywhere near the same amount of time or care spent on it – and consequently the scripts have got shabbier and the plotlines more ridiculous. Bi-sexual nutcase prodigal sons, wives burying adulterous husbands while they're still alive, roadsweepers eating dogs, etc, etc...

So desperate now is the once great show that was EastEnders that it’s even brought back Bianca Jackson (Patsy Palmer) and Ricky Butcher (Sid Owen) in the hope that they can inject some much-needed interest in the show. And, in a sign of how rubbish the rest of the characters and their storylines currently are, it’s actually sort of working.

In a repeat storyline from when Bianca’s mum Carol Jackson first came into the show, Bianca has returned with a gaggle of kids by different fathers in tow. Unlike her mum, however, she’s a bit rubbish at looking after them and they were briefly taken into care while she got her act together and now has them back. Palmer was never the greatest actress in the world but she could do the screeching, gob-on-legs-with-a-heart that was Bianca quite well.

And in this latest incarnation she’s almost becoming the unofficial spokesperson for the Slag Chav Mum’s Society. ‘You try bringin’ four kids up on benefit with yer husband banged up inside!’ she thunderously muses at one point. Quite…

Her nice-but-dim ex-hubby Ricky, of course, was only ever a great character in relation to the amount of great one-liners or put-downs his much-missed dad, Frank Butcher (played by the late Mike Reid), could deliver to him. Sadly the character Frank Butcher’s death is the initial reason for his and Bianca’s return to the show so it seems his key raison d’etre is already a non-starter.

No more will the cockney tones of his dad call him a ‘Pilchard’ or ask him ‘Do you think I’m a double-yolker?’ or ‘What am I? The speaking clock?’ So Ricky is back too but his role seems much less well-defined and as Sid Owen’s not exactly hunk material or a truly gifted actor you have to wonder what it’s all about as the Square's not exactly short of thick bokes…

But it doesn’t matter how many characters they bring back or invent, the major trouble at the Walford mill is the quality of the scripts. There are occasional good episodes but too many times characters are asked to behave in a totally unbelievable manner or they spend long periods of time explaining or examining their actions, which from a dramatic point of view means the writers are trying fit square pegs in round holes then justifying using the hammer to get them in place. It's very poor indeed.

EastEnders is pretty rubbish at present but, to paraphrase Bianca, ‘You try creatin’ two hours of prime-time telly when the people in charge clearly have no idea about character integrity or dramatic logic. It’d never ‘appen with that Jane Austen, posh bitch!’ How true...