One of the most unlikely episodes in British television history unfolded on an isolated Devon hillside one evening in September 1986. It was then that around 60 inmates at Dartmoor Prison, who had been spending \u201cfree association\u201d watching the BBC\u2019s hit drama serial EastEnders<\/em>, started rioting. Chairs and tables were broken up, and lightbulbs smashed.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, officials launched an urgent investigation. Had the poor quality of food just served for supper triggered the outburst? Not, it seemed, in this case. It had been TV \u2013 or rather, its temporary absence \u2013 that had apparently caused the fracas.<\/p>\n

On the night in question, EastEnders<\/em> had featured one of the main characters, the teenage mother Michelle Fowler, jilt her sweetheart, Lofty, at the altar and declare her love instead for the father of her baby: the landlord of the Queen Vic pub, \u201cDirty Den\u201d Watts. In soap-opera terms, it was a classic moment of high drama, and around 20 million Britons \u2013 roughly half the adult population of the entire country \u2013 had tuned in. At the crucial moment, all reception in Dartmoor Prison had been lost \u2013 the latest in a growing list of reception failures at the institution. By the time the picture returned to normal, all the inmates could see was Lofty crying alone in his bedsit.<\/p>\n

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Explore the history of the BBC<\/h4>\n
This is part 8 in a 13-part series by David Hendy that charts how the BBC shaped the nation. Read more about the history of the BBC<\/a>:<\/p>\n
Part 1 | The BBC begins: how a group of radio pioneers launched one of Britain\u2019s most famous institutions<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Part 2 | Broadcasting House: a new home for the BBC<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Part 3 | Andy Pandy to Blue Peter: how the BBC captivated little citizens<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Part 4 | From \u201cexotic\u201d attractions to changing racial attitudes: the BBC\u2019s slow progress to mirror multicultural Britain<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Part 5 |<\/strong>\u00a0The BBC changes its tune to play the sounds of the sixties<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
Part 6 |<\/strong>\u00a0The BBC\u2019s Third Programme troubled championing of \u201chigh culture\u201d<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n
Part 7 | The BBC goes into the wild: the rise of natural history television and David Attenborough<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
In less than two years after its February 1985 launch, EastEnders<\/em> had become compulsive viewing. Indeed, it had been designed by the BBC with this goal in mind \u2013 conceived as a finely honed weapon in an ongoing TV ratings war that the corporation desperately needed to win.<\/p>\n
The broadcaster had been doing reasonably well when it came to peak-time programmes. Its evening schedule featured, among other hits, Dynasty<\/em>, Top of the Pops<\/em>, The Generation Game<\/em>, \u2018Allo \u2018Allo!<\/em>, Only Fools and Horses<\/em>, Blackadder<\/em><\/a> and The Young Ones<\/em>. Yet by 1983, ITV seemed to be doing even better. While the BBC\u2019s licence fee income was stagnant, advertising revenues for the regional commercial companies were buoyant, and they had used their wealth to splash out on big, audience-friendly series for the most lucrative mid-evening slots.<\/p>\n

With a steady stream of programmes about 25 minutes or 50 minutes in length, the poor British viewer was left with an untidy schedule that was almost impossible to follow <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
The BBC was also being held back by programme starting times. Although it did not carry advertising itself, many of its series were being sold abroad and had to be made the right length for networks that did. This meant a steady stream of programmes about 25 minutes or 50 minutes in length, leaving the poor British viewer with an untidy schedule that was almost impossible to follow. ITV\u2019s programmes, which started on the hour or the half hour, were much easier to grasp.<\/p>\n
The result of all this in ratings terms was that five of the top six series were now ITV\u2019s. It was a dangerous position for the BBC to find itself in. It might not be obliged to think only of ratings \u2013 but if its audience share ever dipped below something like 30 per cent, life could become politically very difficult.<\/p>\n
How could the corporation carry on justifying a universal licence fee if a growing portion of the public were no longer using its services? A new peak-time soap opera \u2013 something that could perhaps take on ITV\u2019s hugely popular Coronation Street<\/em> \u2013 presented itself as the obvious solution: a programme that would have as its prime objective the maintenance of audience share.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t miss our podcast series on the history of the BBC \u2013\u00a0listen to all episodes so far<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
A window on society<\/h3>\n
The idea of the BBC broadcasting a soap opera \u2013 or, to use the BBC\u2019s preferred term, a \u201cpopular drama serial\u201d \u2013 was neither new nor revolutionary. As was often the case, radio had led the way. The corporation\u2019s wartime North American Service had featured Front Line Family<\/em>, the ongoing story of the Robinson family\u2019s gutsy determination to endure bombing, blackout and rationing.<\/p>\n
Its producers had worked on the basis of a simple rule of thumb: \u201cBritish in content, American in appeal,\u201d and Front Line Family<\/em>\u2019s 15-minute episodes, beamed across the Atlantic every weekday, had provided US and Canadian listeners with what one critic called the \u201crefreshing sea-breeze of strength and determination\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the decades since, two other radio serials had successfully woven their way into Britain\u2019s own national culture: The Archers<\/em> and Mrs Dale\u2019s Diary<\/em>. Val Gielgud, the BBC\u2019s long-serving head of Radio Drama, loathed them both. Mrs Dale\u2019s Diary<\/em>, in particular, he dismissed as \u201csociologically corrupting\u201d because it encouraged what he saw as a \u201cmediocrity of mind\u201d among listeners. He also thought the standardised \u201cproduction line\u201d approach that such serials required, with staff asked to make essentially the same programme week after week, year after year, was inimical to good morale and the overall quality of the BBC\u2019s drama output.<\/p>\n

The BBC\u2019s head of Radio Drama loathed both The Archers and Mrs Dale\u2019s Diary. The latter, in particular, he dismissed as ‘sociologically corrupting’ <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Yet Gielgud failed to acknowledge their ability to dramatise real social problems. Mrs Dale\u2019s Diary<\/em>, for instance, grappled throughout the 1950s and 1960s with many of the issues that millions of women listening at home would have recognised: the conflict between the demands of home-making and the desire to go out to work, the pressures of motherhood, failing marriages.<\/p>\n
But, as with The Archers<\/em>, the overall tone was certainly one of cosiness and respectability. And when BBC Television dipped a very tentative toe into the same brew in 1954 with the launch of The Grove Family<\/em>, the portrayal of life in their Hendon home had much the same feel.<\/p>\n
EastEnders<\/em> was designed to be altogether more gritty. And the high stakes involved meant that little was left to chance. Two existing TV drama series \u2013 Triangle<\/em> and Angels<\/em> \u2013 were axed so that a ring-fenced budget of more than \u00a31.6m could be deployed on a dedicated set in Elstree.<\/p>\n
New directors were hand-picked rom London\u2019s top theatres. Casting, rehearsals and scriptwriting went on for months, and a full-time producer and scriptwriter were recruited: Julia Smith and Tony Holland, who had worked on Z Cars<\/em> together.<\/p>\n
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In focus: EastEnders<\/em>\u2019 Christmas special attracts the highest ratings of the decade<\/h4>\n
In 1986, staff from the social research organisation Mass Observation asked thousands of volunteer diary-keepers to record how they spent Christmas Day. The replies proved \u2013 if anyone still needed convincing \u2013 that, in many homes, Christmas meant Christmas TV.<\/p>\n
And, this year in particular, it meant EastEnders<\/em>. Since it was already the most popular programme on British screens, the BBC opted to treat viewers to not one but two instalments, the first just after 6.30pm, the second at 10pm.<\/p>\n
Programme details in Radio Times<\/em><\/a> offered tantalising clues as to what would unfold across the evening by including two short snatches of dialogue. The first was apparently from Angie, whose husband \u201cDirty Den\u201d was the landlord of the Queen Vic pub: \u201cNothing can go wrong, Den. I want this to be the best Christmas we\u2019ve ever had.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the second instalment, the magazine\u2019s listings featured an altogether darker line: \u201cThey should bring back hanging for people like Den Watts.\u201d What on earth was capable of provoking such a terrifying outburst after that initial display of goodwill?<\/p>\n
The diaries reveal a nation of viewers on tenterhooks. \u201cAte Christmas pudding with cream and sauce in lounge in front of TV,\u201d wrote one, \u201cWatched EastEnders<\/em> with great glee and everybody determined to watch second half at 10pm.\u201d \u201c9.35pm: more conversation then more TV as we were all waiting for the day\u2019s second episode of EastEnders<\/em>,\u201d another recorded. \u201cWe all agreed that the Beeb had been very crafty.\u201d<\/p>\n
By 10.30pm, all had been revealed. Den had discovered that Angie had lied to him about being terminally ill, and now served her divorce papers in cold blooded revenge. If that wasn\u2019t dramatic enough, Pauline Fowler had also discovered that Den was the father of Michelle\u2019s baby \u2013 another long-running plotline that had sparked much audience speculation.<\/p>\n
It was melodrama with the dial turned to maximum. But it proved to be a ratings winner, too. Thirty million of us watched \u2013 the biggest television audience of the 1980s.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
Compulsive viewing<\/h3>\n
The programme they created had all the classic soap-opera elements familiar to viewers of Coronation Street<\/em>: strong female characters, a pub at the centre of the community, and in Albert Square a working-class neighbourhood that, whatever the personal fallings out behind closed doors, remained closely-knit at heart.<\/p>\n
Yet EastEnders<\/em> added to this familiar mix a touch of the \u201cBlitz spirit<\/a>\u201d and storylines that self-consciously tackled pressing social issues such as unemployment, imprisonment, rape, drugs, racism, homophobia, and suicide. For now, the BBC\u2019s new serial also went considerably further than Coronation Street<\/em> in capturing the increasingly multicultural character of late 20th-century Britain.<\/p>\n
What perhaps distinguished EastEnders<\/em> most of all from its BBC predecessors was the hard-headed publicity machine that helped to ensure that half the British adult population would soon be watching regularly. A stream of gossipy titbits about cast members or up coming plot twists was fed to the tabloid newspapers so that it became \u201cthe soap opera they cannot stop writing about\u201d.<\/p>\n
Read more | 10 things you (probably) didn\u2019t know about the history of London<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>
\u201c[Coronation<\/em>] Street<\/em> is old-fashioned and corny,\u201d the editor of the News of the World<\/em> said. \u201cEastEnders<\/em> with its violence, sex and crime is much more like the real world.\u201d The result of saturation coverage was that the so-called \u201cDallas effect\u201d kicked in: the serial became so talked about that viewers felt they were missing out if they failed to watch.<\/p>\n
In less than 12 months, the journalist Andy Medhurst wrote in the Observer<\/em>: \u201c\u2018Who was the father of Michelle\u2019s baby?\u2019 had replaced \u2018Who shot JR?\u2019 as the country\u2019s favourite soap question.\u201d It was Medhurst, too, who later put his finger on what all this meant for a BBC under constant attack from Margaret Thatcher\u2019s government during the 1980s.<\/p>\n
Popularity was the shield which allowed the corporation to also pursue quality. It would, he wrote, \u201conly be a slight exaggeration to say that it was EastEnders<\/em> which kept the BBC safe from privatisation: every time you\u2019re grateful that a film, football match or opera isn\u2019t scarred by the intrusion of ads, it\u2019s the inhabitants of Albert Square you ought to thank.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Hendy is emeritus professor at the University of Sussex. His latest book is The BBC: A People\u2019s History<\/em> (Profile, 2022)<\/strong><\/p>\n
This article was first published in the August 2022 issue of <\/strong><\/em>BBC History Magazine<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n
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