Character Creation and Development
Binnie and her girlfriend Della Alexander were the first lesbian couple to be featured in EastEnders. Their inclusion was an attempt to portray positive examples of characters who just happen to be homosexual. Their lesbian kiss accounted for some 45 percent of viewer complaints to the BBC regarding EastEnders in 1994; provoking more complaints than any other television programme that year (according to research published by the Broadcasting Standards Council in 1995).
In 2005 their lesbian kiss was featured in E4's X Rated: Top 20 Most Controversial TV Moments; a documentary examining British TV's most talked about on-screen moments. It was placed at number 11 in the chart and, according to the poll, received an estimated 486 viewer complaints and 180 column inches in the British press.
In 1995, bisexual actress Pam St. Clement, who plays Pat Evans, was asked if EastEnders' first lesbian storyline suffered from "seeming to follow the pack rather than lead it". She commented, "I think they realised there was something missing, but having given themselves that brief they didn't know what the fuck to do with it. I think Michael Cashman made Colin Russell so successful because he is a gay man. I'd never argue for somebody having to be a part to do it - you don't have to be a murderer to play Othello - and I think the two young girls did what they could, but they couldn't really give the programme any help."
Read more about this topic: Binnie Roberts
Famous quotes containing the words character, creation and/or development:
“Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“She sings as the moon sings:
“I am I, am I;
The greater grows my lift
The further that I fly.”
All creation shivers
With that sweet cry.”
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“Dissonance between family and school, therefore, is not only inevitable in a changing society; it also helps to make children more malleable and responsive to a changing world. By the same token, one could say that absolute homogeneity between family and school would reflect a static, authoritarian society and discourage creative, adaptive development in children.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)