A moment of brilliance (Eastenders)

Member Name: gollygumdrops

Product:	Eastenders
Date:	01/09/00 (272 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Random excellence

Disadvantages: Mostly tosh

Ordinarily I find EastEnders very easy to miss. The storylines are so dull and depressing that I can go for three months without watching a single episode and pick up right where I left off.

The BBC make a big deal about making the show as realistic and 'relevant' as possible, but really they just seem to make it downbeat. I'm not a Londoner, but I think I'd be hard pressed to find a London square in which everyone knows each other, and all the residents work within a two minute walk of their homes.

Young characters in the show are usually portrayed as being on the brink of a collapse into drugs, alcohol or crime. Old women are disapproving, old men are horny, and middle aged characters are an unfortunate plot construction, simply designed to keep other characters moving through the show.

That was until the 'can't miss an episode' Peggy, Frank, Pat, Roy, Irene and Terry in Spain feature. Ordinarily I flee from off set soaps, and I can never forgive EastEnders for the downright offensive Eire episodes. However I found this gripping. For the first time in a soap middle aged characters were shown to be rounded, complicated people.

Terry, who had been brought into the show as a drunken, wife and child beating compulsive gambler has mellowed over the years, but the tender portrayal of his character as a man in crisis was outstanding. Even the love scenes between Pat and Frank were handled sensitively.

If this is the dawn of a new writing style for Eastenders then I'm going to have to invest in a new VCR, but I fear it was a momentary blip and we'll be back to Mitchell beating, Fowler whining, Cotton moralising sop next week.

Summary: