Almost exactly 25 years ago, three men burst on to our television screens by knocking down the door of Reg Cox's bedsit. They were Den Watts, Arthur Fowler and Ali Osman and they were making history in the very first episode of EastEnders. Cox, sadly, was dead, the first of many in the Walford drama that has so far claimed the lives of 78 of its characters.
What is very much alive and kicking, however, is the popularity of the soap and its importance to the BBC. EastEnders represents the first time that prim "Auntie Beeb" produced a successful television soap to rival Coronation Street, Emmerdale Farm and the emerging Brookside. In doing so, Julia Smith and Tony Holland – the first producer and screenwriter – created a show that became a national institution, and, arguably, the saviour of the corporation and its licence fee-funded model. Not only is EastEnders the BBC's most consistent programme in terms of ratings, but it is the programme that reaches young and ethnic minority viewers that the national broadcaster otherwise struggles to woo.
Smith and Holland were already a successful partnership, having worked on Z Cars and the popular nursing drama Angels, when they were approached by BBC executives spooked by the success of Channel 4's Brookside in the early 1980s. They needed a soap opera that would connect with "middle Britain" and the project was eventually agreed by Michael Grade. The BBC had been scarred by several failures to create a popular soap, including the ill-fated ferry drama Triangle, which lasted three series.
Holland, from the East End of London, devised the show, drawing heavily on childhood experience. He died in 2007 aged 67, but John Yorke, the BBC's head of drama production, says: "I think EastEnders stems from a child's eye view, a world in which there were strong families, and a sense of community and adversity shaped by the second world war." Bomb damage was a feature of early Albert Square sets, as was an emphasis on struggling through adversity – while humour, used in northern soaps, was downplayed.
Strong women
The third critical element in the EastEnders formula was an emphasis on matriarchy, as epitomised by Wendy Richard's Pauline Fowler or Barbara Windsor's Peggy Mitchell, which attracted the female-dominated early evening audience. Yorke puts that down to Holland's "gay sensibility, which showed a love for strong woman", and in so doing helped created television that meant "BBC licence fee payers are actually getting what they want from the BBC". The first episode was watched by 17 million and an all-time record 30.5 million viewers tuned in on Christmas Day 1986 to watch the womanising Den Watts serve divorce papers on his alcoholic wife, Angie.
Such gritty peaktime soaps are an almost uniquely British phenomenon. US drama is far more aspirational, and other parts of the world more influenced by romantic telenovellas, rather than the daily diet of death, destruction and divorce that is a British soap. Mal Young, who was working on Brookside when EastEnders launched, and then ran the Walford soap between 1997 and 2004, says that EastEnders succeeded because it followed in an established British tradition. "It starts with the kitchen sink dramas, the Osborne plays that led to Coronation Street, Brookside and finally EastEnders. We are fascinated by the underbelly of society."
A long period of success followed. Johnathan Young, who worked as a show runner on the first episode and later became one of its directors, says what characterised it from the early stages was the "high volumes of feedback from the audience" – a show that captured the country's imagination before the days of reality TV shows and social networking sites.
Indeed, EastEnders has only been under serious threat once in its history. The emergence of the reality shows – Big Brother, Pop Idol and The X Factor – brought the soap to a crisis in the middle of the noughties. In September 2005, ratings slumped to 6.6 million and behind the scenes the production was in chaos, with scripts only written 48 hours before screening. EastEnders has recovered, helped initially by the return of the Mitchell brothers, but still has to fight against reality shows, and Young, now the head of drama at TalkbackThames, the producer of The Bill, worries that it is still the reality programmes with their "real-life soap opera storyline" that dominate the public imagination.
Today, the soap is going through a revival, helped by the build-up to the second wedding of the popular characters Ricky and Bianca as well as the Archie Mitchell whodunnit. The rogue, played by Larry Lamb, was killed on 25 December using the bust of Queen Vic, in Albert Square's pub – and the identity of his killer will be revealed in the first live episode on 19 February, the date of the 25th anniversary.
These storylines helped give EastEnders an average audience of 10.8 million in January, putting it ahead of Coronation Street, at 10.4 million, for the first time in more than three years. With the programme now on four times a week, costing a relatively modest £150,000 an episode, its success is critical to the performance of BBC1. The former BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey once said: "When EastEnders is going well, BBC1 is going well." The only time of the week the BBC believes it can launch a show is after an EastEnders episode, or possibly after Holby City.
Yet it is what underlies the ratings figures that is almost more important to the BBC hierarchy. BBC figures claim that 43% of black people and other ethnic minority groups watch EastEnders regularly – helped by the introduction of the Masood family in 2007. BBC executives recognise the programme reaches a part of the country – young, multi-ethnic – in a way that no other BBC output does.
Important issues
Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, argues that EastEnders embodies the values of the modern public service BBC, describing it as "a central part of national life" that is "fantastic entertainment" and has "at the same time raised awareness and tackled many important issues – from HIV and Aids, mental health, domestic violence, drug misuse and many others".
With the rise of much cheaper reality TV programmes, several TV executives fear that launches such as EastEnders belong to the past. The last big successful launch was in 1995 with Channel 4's Hollyoaks. Long-running shows benefit from the fact that people have grown up with them and retain a loyalty no longer available in the world of multichannel TV.
Peter Bazalgette, the former chief creative officer at Big Brother's producer, Endemol, observes: "Not only does EastEnders help justify the compulsory licence fee system, because of its popularity with mass audiences, but it looks like it might not be possible in today's climate to create a new soap if EastEnders ever needed to be replaced. That makes it all the more valuable to the BBC."
Or as Yorke puts it: "Can you imagine where the BBC would be today if it had not launched EastEnders?"
"People make up fan fiction. Fan porn fiction!" Effy from Skins, known to her parents as Kaya Scodelario, is sitting on the back of a catering bus in a car park in Bristol, explaining that the show's fanbase proves its devotion in unlikely ways. The internet is awash with hormonal reimaginings of what the characters get up to in an alternate universe, and it usually involves manly hugging or fighting that turns into something altogether more sexual.
"The best are the boys' ones; you can read them and imagine it!" she giggles. "It's funny."
The amount, scope and terrifying imagination of Skins fan fiction is staggering, but E4's teen smash – about to start its fourth series – is the kind of programme that inspires serious dedication. Its viewers officially number around a million per episode when it's on TV, but unofficially the audience is much bigger than that, both locally and internationally, thanks to its online presence. For a show that was written off by many critics as teen nonsense at the start of the first series, it's been hugely successful. Skins fans voted it to victory in the Audience Award category at last year's Baftas, beating The X Factor, Coronation Street and The Apprentice. The fans have also had an impact on the focus of the new series. The emotional centre of the previous run was meant to be the love triangle between Effy (younger sister of series one star Tony) and her sixth-form suitors Freddie and Cook. It's been a narcissistic and painfully adult affair of some messiness, but it was the smaller, and far sweeter, story about two girls falling in love with each other that really grabbed the viewers' attention. As a result, Emily and Naomi – that's Naomily to brevity-lovers – are now a much bigger part of the show.
"Last year it was a side storyline," confirms Lily Loveless, who plays Naomi, "but this year it's quite important, probably because of the comments on the website."
Kat Prescott (Emily) is happy that it's had such a positive impact with the audience. "I've had four fan letters, which was so cool," she grins. "People who can relate to it probably feel quite alienated in some ways, so to see it … I know if I was in that position it would be a relief. There isn't that much about young girls coming out."
And they weren't just coming out. They ended up as romantic leads in a primetime teenage drama and the couple that all the viewers were rooting for. At the end of the last series, they were the only ones with a high-school-movie-style happy ending.
"After Emily admitted she was gay," Kat explains, "the rest of the series wasn't about them being girls. It was about two people being in love and one of them, for whatever reason, was being funny." She shrugs, "So that was quite cool. Because I don't think it should be a massive issue."
For all its posturing, the outwardly cool, don't-give-a-shit kids aren't necessarily where the heart of Skins lies. Series four kicks off with an episode given over to Thomas, who arrived in Bristol from the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the start of series three. He didn't really do much except get a girlfriend and beat Mackenzie Crook in a chilli-eating contest. This time, he's balancing his mother's expectations and religion with teenage life in a different environment with an entirely new moral code to negotiate. It's a thoughtful, heavyweight storyline, and Merv Lukeba, who plays him, is thrilled to be getting more attention.
"It's a wicked episode," he smiles. "I've got four sex scenes with four different girls! You should have seen the grin on my face when I got the scripts. I'm nicely looked after. High five, Mr Executive Producer!"
'At 17, I was going, "Why are my parents so stupid?" Once I got that, I got the show' John Griffin, producer
Thomas's struggle to fit in and the Naomi-Emily love story suggest that – whisper it! – Skins is sometimes, kind of, responsible television. It can handle the "issues" because it's well written, by a mix of experienced and very young writers, who use a team of teenage consultants to come in for a meeting once a week to give their thoughts on the latest developments. And the young cast are bolstered by an incredible roster of guest stars, including Peter Capaldi, Sally Phillips, Paul Kaye, Josie Long, Bill Bailey, Olivia Colman, Harry Enfield, David Baddiel, Ronni Ancona, Chris Addison and Ardal O'Hanlon, who usually pop up as inept parents who are far more irresponsible than their offspring.
"When I first saw it, I thought, 'Why are the adults so two-dimensional and silly?'" explains series producer John Griffin, standing outside an anonymous house in a Bristol suburb that leads a double life as Effy's back garden. Griffin produced the equally raucous Shameless for Channel 4 before taking on Skins for series four. "I didn't get it. Then it dawned on me. At 17, I was going, 'Why are my parents so stupid? They don't understand. They behave in a ridiculous way.' Once I got that, I got the show."
And now, the show is turning into an industry. There's a film in development, possibly with the series three/four cast; their last call before a new guard is ushered in for the next two-year cycle. A novel came out at the start of the month, offering an official take on fan fiction by filling in the gaps of the unseen summer holiday in a style somewhere between Mills & Boon and Bebo. (Sample extract: "Cook sniggered, his face sweating – from the heat, from the MDMA. 'Fair enough, Naomikins.' He took a swig of lager and waved the can at us.") Then there's the American remake, which gets the cast riled up, because they're not sure it will work with the stricter US broadcasting rules; and, of course, there's the prospect of a whole new gang for 2011/12 and beyond. "In that sense," says Griffin, "we've made a show with more longevity than anything else. Normally your cast get too old. It gets tired. The second year means we can tell whatever story we want. As long as we keep reinventing it … I think it can last. By the time our audience are in their late 20s, I think people will talk about which was their Skins generation, like I talk about my Doctor Who." Does he think it's already influential? "I do, I suppose, but I never quite know who's copying who. I think if I'm being really honest, the really cool kids, older teens, sneer at Skins a little bit. But we've become an incredibly aspirational show for kids who are just going out into the adult world, wanting to go to sixth-form college, and wanting their lives to be that fantastic. Or tragic!"
There's no point in denying that the drink, drugs and reckless shagging are a huge draw for its teenage audience. Griffin doesn't even try; you might have to tick a box to say you're 18 or over to watch the show online, but he's well aware that it appeals to a younger crowd. He reasons that the cast are roughly the same age as their characters, and if they don't break the rules about what the actors can do, it shouldn't be too much for its viewers to handle. Then there are the mega-fun trailers for each series, which pack in enough sex, drugs and rock'n'roll to get the more reactionary headline-makers up in arms about – shock! – real-life "Skins parties". Teenagers! In houses! Getting off with each other! Or, if the Daily Mail is to be believed, gatherings "named after the Channel 4 drama about appallingly behaved teenagers", in which houses get trashed and family pets are drugged.
Attracting such a mix of snooty disapproval and parental fear, as it has from the start, just shows that Skins is doing its job properly; Hollyoaks would give its entire Wags wardrobe to be this smart, funny and relevant. Because Skins really is one of the best shows for and about teenagers that British TV has ever come up with. It's just that, like all teenagers, it's misunderstood.
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