Former EastEnders writer warns standard is slipping

Published Tuesday 8 May 2007 at 17:00 by Matthew Hemley

Ex-EastEnders writer, Tony Jordan, has criticised the quality of the long-running BBC1 soap, claiming it is “going through the doldrums”.

Jordan, who worked on the show for 18 years but left in February, told The Stage the show was better when it only ran for two episodes each week and raised concern over the BBC’s plans to up the weekly episode count to five.

He said: “Was it a better show when it was twice a week? Absolutely - without a shadow of a doubt.

“The reason for that is because they were shooting just an hour’s worth of television and had time to spend on each individual episode.

“If you are producing two-and-a-half hours a week television it’s basically a movie a week and some things suffer for that.

“EastEnders is going through the doldrums a little bit lately, but the one thing about EastEnders is that it will always come back because there is a great team of people working in it.”

Jordan, who was chief scriptwriter and series consultant on EastEnders, also said he is planning to launch a screenwriting competition through his new production company, Red Planet Pictures, later this year.

He added: “I used to do workshops and seminars with new writers at EastEnders and I am trying to find a way to continue that with my production company.

“I really want to find new writing talent and help them get their voice out there.”

I didn't see that rape but Toyah was on Corrie when I got it.

Tony Jordan is still being listed as consultant on EE as of a few weeks ago when I read the credits. But I'm 5 weeks behind. I didn't bother reading the credits for the last couple of weeks I watched.

BBC America ran Hollyoaks: In the City only for a few weeks then dropped it. They used the shorter title "In the City." They had a few additional episodes "On Demand" but they're gone now.

I'm hoping when they pick up Hollyoaks in a week or 2 they'll bring "In the City" back. I really enjoyed what I saw.

Also, as far as I know, Tony Jordan is involved with both Hustle, which airs in America on AMC, and with Life on Mars, which BBC America owns and ran the first season. Season 2 hasn't shown up yet here.

For Hustle Tony wrote all or nearly all the scripts for the first couple of seasons.

I missed most of the current season they're running and didn't check the credits for the couple I saw.

Thank you, James. I’ve just read somewhere on the net that John Fay is the leading writer for The Street. Here’s Jonathan Harvey’s biography:

Jonathan Harvey (born 1968) is a British playwright whose work has earned multiple awards. He is also a former secondary school English teacher.

Hailed as “the new theatrical voice of his generation”, Jonathan Harvey was born in Halewood, Liverpool in 1968. His father was a postman who went to college late in life and went on to become a social worker. Mrs Harvey was a family planning nurse, which Harvey cites as “always quite a saucy job for my mother to have when I went to secondary school. When it came to sex education, I knew all about it!”

Harvey’s first serious attempt as a playwright was in 1987. Fuelled by the attraction of a £1,000 first prize to young writers from the Liverpool Playhouse, the result was The Cherry Blossom Tree, a garish blend of suicide, murder and nuns. This effort won him the National Girobank Young Writer of the Year Award.

Feeling very encouraged, he went on to write Mohair (1988), Wildfire (1992) and Babies (1993), the latter winning him the ‘George Devine Award’ for that year and The Evening Standard’s ‘Most Promising Playwright Award’ for 1994. 1993 also saw the premiere of Beautiful Thing for which he won the prestigious ‘John Whiting Award’ the following year. 1995 saw the premiere of Boom Bang-A-Bang, at the Bush Theatre, London, originally directed by Kathy Burke. Harvey sites it as “my most comic play ever, but with some dark bits”. Centred around a group of friends gathering to watch the Eurovision Song Contest, the play was a sell-out. That same year, he also premiered Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club, his “much more sad, serious and dark play”.

Guiding Star (1998), is a portrayal of one man’s struggle to come to terms with the Hillsborough FA Cup Semi-Final disaster, whilst Hushabye Mountain (1999) deals with a world that has learned to live with aids. Out in the Open (2001), is a caustic and funny exploration of love and the limits of friendship.

Television and film works include: West End Girls (Carlton); Love Junkie (BBC); Beautiful Thing (Channel Four/Island World Productions), the 1998 hit/cult comedy series starring Kathy Burke and James Dreyfus, Gimme Gimme Gimme (Tiger Aspect), Murder Most Horrid (BBC) and Coronation Street (ITV).

He also wrote the book for Closer to Heaven, a stage musical with songs and music written by the Pet Shop Boys. Closer to Heaven ran for nine months at the Arts Theatre in London in 2001 and recently ran in Australia in 2005.

CANCELLED! RTL's (Germany) fourth daily soap "Ahornallee" which debuted on April 16th, 2007 will air its last episode only two months later. The final broadcast (episode 42) is scheduled for June 15th. From the first day on the new soap struggled as only 800.000 people watched the pilot episode - the ratings decreased even more during the following days. The timeslot at 5 pm will be filled with repeats of the critically acclaimed comedy "Mein Leben & Ich" ("Me and My Life"). Meanwhile, "Alles was zählt" which was launched as RTL's third soap in September 2006 has become an instant hit for the network as it is watched by more than 2.5 million people every day.

I just watched two episodes of EastEnders, in which Max told Tanya about what Jim did to him (buried him alive when he was thirteen) and the other one in which may accused Rob of hitting her (he was arrested at the end of the episode). I must say I quite liked the episodes, maybe because the first was written by Simon Ashdown and the other by Annie Wood.

The one by Ashdown was really great because it basically had three scenes split in to several smaller scenes and had great dialogue.

I can't believe Jim is such a psycopath and a Nazi... All this time I thought of him as a nice elderly gentlemen (yeah, right ), but he turned out to be quite a different person.

Dot is annoying me, as usual. I can't stand June Brown's voice and her constant citing of the Bible. It seems so fake... This time it was the Ephesians:

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

Edited May 27, 200718 yr by Sylph

I love June Brown. Watch her play a completely different character in Gormenghast.

But Dot although more mellowed over the years has always quoted the Bible like that.

Jim was rather abrupt and cranky when I first saw him. He always seemed a bit of a waste of space. Always trying to con people or play games or be lazy. He's also become mellowed and nicer over the past few years.

I love June Brown. Watch her play a completely different character in Gormenghast.

But Dot although more mellowed over the years has always quoted the Bible like that.

Yes, I know - Bible is her trademark. Her voice annoys me, I know she is a super actress, but what can I do?

Jim was rather abrupt and cranky when I first saw him. He always seemed a bit of a waste of space. Always trying to con people or play games or be lazy. He's also become mellowed and nicer over the past few years.

A monster.

Did I just see Mickey and Li growing cannabis in the basement?

Edited June 3, 200718 yr by Sylph

Did I just saw Mickey and Li growing cannabis in the basement""

I don't know but it sounds like the show has completely lost it and gone way over the top.

JUNE BROWN IS A GREAT ACTRESS, SHE IS BORN IN 1927, AND ACTUALLY HAS SOMETHING TO DO YET, IN THE STATES SHE PROBALY WOULD BE WASTED. BUT I AGREE THAT DOT CAN BE VERY ANNOYING, SO I THINK PAT AND PEGGY, THEY ARE THE FIGHTERS.

I'm watching 5 weeks ago. Li moved in with Mickey & Gus and is making their lives hell. They just found a stash of cannabis she's growing. Mickey was not best pleased to discover it. Obviously something's been going on since then.

Last week Dot & Jim only did a brief cameo near the end of the last episode. This week they're on non-stop again with that baby they're now passing off as Nick's with some nurse in the prison.

The rest of the week didn't have Dot or Jim. It was about Kevin & Denise's wedding & the threat of Shirley with Pat & Shirley having a blowout fight landing them in jail for the night. Shirley continued her antics right up until the "big bang" end.

Unlike GH & ABC, this was a real "big bang" not a bomb or gun-waving or ridiculous meaningless "event" like a typhoon or train wreck. It was a threat Shirley made when she was drunk. And it was a very accurate sounding threat even though on the surface it didn't make a lot of sense. She vowed to make sure that Kevin & Denise's marriage fell apart within a year.

But it demonstrated that the show still "has it" and that it knows how to really do powerful compelling drama (UNLIKE ABC.)

Incidentally, Tony Jordan is STILL listed as series consultant.

I think Diederick Santer's work on Eastenders, is just starting to air on screen now. We have to remember, he only joined as exec producer in January.

ITV.com ready for relaunch

ITV.com has long been one of the worst media websites around, impossible to search and bereft of content. Hopefully, that will all change - a relaunch is set to go live next Tuesday. As Mark Sweeney reports for Media Guardian, the main innovation included in the £20m revamp is the broadcasting of shows from ITV1, ITV2 and ITV3 live online.

A staged rollout of ITV.com's video streaming will see the 30-day catchup service and programme archive activated for different programme genres on a week-by-week basis.

Soaps such as

Coronation Street

and

Emmerdale

will be the first genre to launch, followed - on subsequent Tuesdays - by broadband games, drama, lifestyle, sport, entertainment and news.

Edited June 9, 200718 yr by Sylph