‘EASTENDERS’ : ‘EastEnders’ Arrives as Working-Class TV Act

The dingy London market street is hung with Christmas decorations that only emphasize the tattiness of the run-down neighborhood’s shops and homes. In front of the inevitable pub is a fruit-and-veg stall, and the Cockney costermonger is keeping up a steady stream of chatter: “They’re cheap--if you pass these by, you’d pass your own mother by.”

In the background looms a big, ugly railway overpass. But no train has ever passed that way, for this is a television studio. The pigeon droppings on the overpass are painted on. We’re not really in the East End of London, we’re on a British Broadcasting Corp. studio back lot. Here in suburban Elstree, the BBC is putting together another episode of Britain’s most ambitious and most popular television program, a twice-a-week nighttime soap called “EastEnders.”

Since it started three years ago, the show has dominated Britain’s TV ratings with its realistic depiction of working-class life in London. Its average audience is 20 million, a third of the country’s population, rising to peaks of more than 30 million. Now the state-owned BBC is mounting its strongest effort yet to crack the American market by syndicating “EastEnders” to PBS stations, starting this month.

“EastEnders” is a soap unlike any made in the United States, daytime or night. Humor is a prime ingredient. Glamour is largely absent. The plot turns are gentler and less melodramatic. The pace of cutting is much faster, and scenes are shorter. There are no commercial breaks. The social conscience of the show is quite evident. There are no familiar faces among the actors. And the English accents are far downmarket from those usually heard on PBS’ imported drama.

“You’ll never sell this show in America,” warned BBC-TV Director of Programs Michael Grade when Frank Miller, president of the BBC’s American sales subsidiary, Lionheart, broached the idea.

Miller’s job has been to convince PBS station managers that a show that transfixes up to half the entire population of Britain on any given night can attract a larger-than-cult audience in America. Besides faith that 30 million Englishmen can’t be wrong, Miller has little to sell with, beyond the fact that in Barcelona a dubbed version of “EastEnders” pulls bigger numbers than “Dallas” or “Dynasty.”

Nonetheless, the BBC has covered 31% of the American market by signing up 15 stations so far, including KOCE Channel 50 in Huntington Beach, New York’s WNYC, Philadelphia’s WHYY, Houston’s KUHT and Washington D.C.’s WETA.

“We knew from the start that PBS would be our only outlet,” Miller says. “PBS is looking for more viewers 18 to 35, and that’s the show’s biggest audience segment in Britain. We could never have sold to commercial stations in America because we couldn’t take eight minutes out of every half-hour episode to make space for ads.”

The BBC’s insistence on having the series aired five nights a week wherever possible has been a stumbling block, however. Los Angeles’s KCET Channel 28 is among the most prominent major-city PBS stations that have declined the show. The station was interested but was only willing to broadcast the series once a week, so Lionheart sold it instead to KOCE.

It will kick off at KOCE at 9 tonight with a 2 1/2-hour introductory program culled from the show’s first 13 episodes.

Regular Monday-through-Friday programming will start Monday in all markets except Los Angeles, where KOCE will air it Mondays and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m.

“We reasoned that audiences needed familiarity to help conquer the initial difficulties some might find with the accents or subject matter,” Miller says. “Once-a-week airing wouldn’t give us enough excitement in a community.”

“EastEnders” is the creation and day-to-day responsibility of producer Julia Smith. A feisty, white-haired ex-actress, Smith became a director and rose through the BBC’s ranks to her present status as the service’s most influential program-maker.

“There was a gap in the drama department’s output,” Smith says, recalling the route to “EastEnders’ ” debut in 1985. “There are a lot of effete, highbrow writers writing for themselves, not to entertain an audience. They weren’t writing about life as I observed it.”

Smith herself is of working-class London origin, though not from the East End, which is a teeming area on the “wrong” side of the Thames, far from Buckingham Palace, the theater district, tourist hotels and indeed the BBC itself.

When Smith and “EastEnders” script editor Tony Holland were invited to come up with a soap format, the BBC had for years virtually conceded the early-evening audience to two continuing dramas that have aired twice a week for decades on the advertiser-supported Independent Television channel: “Coronation Street” and “Crossroads.”

“Our aim,” Smith says, “was to reach an audience that didn’t have time to tune into full-length drama but wanted to become involved in stories about the problems people encounter in real life.”

The problems encountered by the residents of the mythical Albert Square in the fictional borough of Walford are generally mild compared to those faced by American soap characters. Only one “EastEnder” regular has died in 250 episodes, and he fell in front of a truck trying to save a child. There is no ever-scheming “J.R.”-type villain, no bitch-goddess played by a Joan Collins type.

Instead, there are problems such as arguments over whether a boy should be allowed to take a cooking course or be steered into becoming a boxer. A Cyprus-born Turk takes an English wife, much to his family’s consternation. A tarted-up “yuppiefied” pub with Perrier beer mats opens on the other side of the square, threatening the old working-class Queen Victoria pub.

Yes, there is a philandering charmer, known as Dirty Den to the millions who hiss his every new come-on. There is a woman who drinks too much. There is an unwed mother. There is a gay couple.

There are also discussions of politics and social policy. One current storyline has a boy buying an offensive weapon, being lectured about it and then cutting himself on the blade. No gun has yet been fired or even seen on the show.

During Britain’s general election last year, the pros and cons were discussed on “EastEnders” and the Conservative victory was referred to on the episode that aired the next night.

Smith likes to compare the show to Dickens. “Dickens sought first to entertain, and he also showed the difference between the haves and the haven’ts.”

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