 |
On Television |
 THE ENTIRE CAST OF 'EASTENDERS' |
BBC AMERICA DROPS
A VENERABLE SOAP
By DONNA J. PLESH
of TheColumnists.com
|
It's like a death in the family. BBC-America has dropped the British soap "EastEnders" from its program schedule. With little notice, other than a brief on-air announcement prior to the start of the Sept. 27 omnibus of weekly episodes saying the show would no longer be seen on BBC-A, and a brief paragraph on the cable network's website, the show was quietly dropped. I'm not happy about that, and I suspect that many other "EastEnders" faithful feel the same. I fired off an e-mail to the BBC-A press department and received the same basic response that appears on the network's website: "Unfortunately, 'EastEnders' continued to underperform compared with the rest of our schedule." Translation: The show wasn't getting good enough ratings to justify the costs of the program. For those of you not familiar with "EastEnders," here's a quick primer: It's a continuing soap about the lives of a group of working-class families and singles living in London's East End. The show, which is wildly popular in the United Kingdom, never had a large following on this side of the pond. But there are fans--loyal fans--and they are most unhappy with this turn of events. And I have heard from some of them. The show has been on the air in the UK since the mid 1980s, and has aired in the U.S. on a number of PBS stations since the late 1980s. I first watched the show on my local PBS station and was hooked from episode one. I stuck with the show even when my local PBS station, for reasons still unclear, decided to skip about two years worth of episodes and jump ahead in the plotline. But knowing the show had legions of loyal fans, the station provided fans with an update on what they had missed in those two years of episodes. I was a still a little miffed, but I continued to watch. After all, I had grown up with the characters and grown attached to many of them. They were--and are--like my TV family. Things got even better when I got a satellite dish that carried BBC-America, which aired episodes weekly--only about two weeks after they aired in the UK. I gave up watching "EastEnders" on my local PBS station (they are still airing episodes but are several years behind where the show plots and characters are today) to move ahead to the up-to-date episodes. Things were fine until BBC-A pulled the plug....and just when things were really starting to heat up on the show. One of the favorite--and original--characters, Dirty Den Watts, was set to reappear. Den, as fans know, vanished more than a decade ago under suspicious circumstances. He ran the local pub, the Queen Vic, which is central to the show's plot. Den was a womanizer and a shady character. When he vanished--after getting his daughter Sharon's best friend pregnant--we figured some guys he had crossed did him in. But we weren't sure, since all we know is that something happened when he was walking down by the canal. We heard a splash...but saw nothing. And Den's body was never found. He just vanished into thin air. But just before BBC-A pulled the plug, we learned that Den was not dead. He was coming back to the Square (that's Albert Square, the neighborhood setting of the show) for a reunion with daughter Sharon. Well, now we can't view how this storyline plays out. But at least we can read a synopsis of the weekly episodes on the UK's "EastEnders" website: www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders/ This is a great site for fans of the show--it has episode updates, a history of the show, cast profiles, the lot. If you are an "EastEnders" fan, check it out. If you want to comment about the demise of "EastEnders," e-mail BBC-America at: www.bbcamerica.com/about/contactus_email.jsp. ©2003 by Donna J. Plesh. The photo is from the 'EastEnders' website. |
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