EastEnders has a new name at From Beer To Paternity Towers.
It's now called Shit Shouty Cockney Telly Land. It could just as easily be called Shit Shouty Cockney Telly Land Where Nothing Makes Sense And The Plots Have No Basis In The World Of The Characters but that doesn't trip off the tongue.
So Shit Shouty Cockney Telly Land it is.
I once liked Shit Shouty Cockney Telly Land in the days when it was good old EastEnders and it was well written and well acted. But those days are now nothing but a dim and distant memory, like thinking fondly of a relative who used to give you sweets as a child before you learnt he's recently turned into an alcoholic who shoots kittens with a crossbow then skins them for fun.
The new realisation ruins the fond memory but somewhere you hope the kindly old man is still in there. Although if the kindly old mad was an EastEnders character under the current regime he'd be kidnapping children and dry bumming them in the Vic cellar before having a sex change and mainlining horse. And that's a real horse. And that would happen in the space of one show.
Take the Christmas episode which was actress Lacey Turner's big exit storyline. Her character Stacey had an affair with her husband's dad Max that split up a family, killed a rapist, saw her husband Bradley plunge to his death and was diagnosed bipolar to explain the previous storylines so viewers would regain their sympathy for her. Then she had an affair with the father of her baby Ryan.
So lots of material... and all viewers got was some half-arsed love triangle that required lots of last-minute exposition, the worst stabbing in TV history and an escape from the police that made the events of cartoon series Wacky Races seem credible. Oh, and her dead hubby's dad Max declared his love for her at the airport as she was about to leave.
'So that's it? It's all over?' asked Max at one point.
Yes it is all over. And it was shit.
Currently Shit Shouty Cockney Telly Land features a cot death storyline. But that obviously wasn't considered moving or gripping enough so the producers tagged on a baby swap storyline to it as well. Double the tragedy, double the grief. It's like a cover line from Pick Me Up or some other awful real-life magazine.
Unfortunately Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie, Patsy Palmer and Maisie Smith (Tiffany), Jake Wood and June Brown are the only people who can actually act so watching the episodes when they are not involved is pretty gruelling work. It's like watching a local am-dram group who usually do melodrama suddenly have a go at theatre of cruelty for an audience of pensioners who were expecting farce. It's harrowing. But for all the wrong reasons.
The main problem with Shit Shouty Cockney Telly Land is that it's become drama-porn. In porn it's all about the sex and the money shot. Don't worry about little things like character integrity or creating believable stories. Just get to the action. In about 30 seconds, please...
And that's why EastEnders is Shit Shouty Cockney Telly Land. It's drama-porn. Forget the build-up. Just get to the action. And if two people going at it isn't good enough let's add some more and get them to scream a bit louder. In about 30 seconds, please...
You get the impression nobody involved on the production or the storyline side really cares that much any more. It's just another job in TV land. Unfortunately the show and its viewers deserve something better.
And if they do care and they think this is good... They need telling it's not. But on the plus side it's still not as bad a Come Fly With Me.
As has been well documented on this blog, my Other Women is a confectionary and chocolate slut. To put it bluntly there isn't much she wouldn't do for a Snickers. Or a Wispa.
