East Enders Off Set Episodes - 1989

1989

Dot Cotton, Ethel Skinner, Mo Butcher and Marge Green went to Clacton, where they were seen taking part in a dancing competition. These episode were scripted to contain a lot of humour. At the time the programme had come under criticism in the British media for being too depressing; arguably a reputation that it has never been able to shake. The programme makers were determined to change this. In 1989 there was a deliberate attempt to increase the lighter, more comic aspects of life in Albert Square. The episodes were directed by Nicholas Prosser and produced by future executive-producer, Michael Ferguson.

During the trip, Ethel started to get jealous when her dancing partner, Reggie Thompson, began flirting outrageously with Gladys, another senior woman from Ethel's retirement home. Meanwhile Dot was appalled to discover that Ethel had brought her pug Willy along in her luggage. Marge was initially very gloomy, and spent much of her time worrying for her bed-ridden mother back in Walford. Things changed when she met the suave Mr. Conroy, a widower looking for love. Mo met a cantankerous Welsh man, and began arguing with him almost instantly, though she later found that she had more in common with him than she first realised. Mr. Conroy decided to propose to Marge and asked her to come and live with him in his cottage in Kent. Marge couldn't consider abandoning her sickly mother and was forced to turn him down. Embarrassed, Mr. Conroy called for a cab and left, at the same time that Marge received a phone call from home informing her that her mother had died, meaning she could have accepted his proposal after all.