Charlie Slater - Reception

Reception

James Donaghy from The Guardian called Charlie "a lovely bloke" and "the embodiment of salt-of-the-earth decency and stupidity", saying one of his favourite moments in Charlie's time in EastEnders was his attack on Trevor. Grace Dent, also from The Guardian, said that one of her favourite soap opera moments of 2008 was when an escaped tarantula crawled up Charlie's leg. The Mail said that Charlie 'was known to millions'. The episode in which he left following the aftermath of the baby swap storyline attracted 10 million viewers according to Digital Spy. His two episode return saw on the 19 April, 10.31 million people watch and on the 21 April, 8.43 million. Christopher Hooton from the Metro newspaper negatively reviewed Charlie's exit scenes, saying, "Unfortunately the long-time cast member's exit felt a little rushed. As EastEnders characters' last hurrahs go, Charlie Slater's will not be going down in TV history." Stuart Heritage from The Guardian criticized Kirkwood's axings saying, By rights, this should be a national day of mourning. EastEnders has got a new executive producer – Bryan Kirkwood – and, as executive producers so often do, he's decided to spend his first few days hiding in a bush, taking out several characters with a poisoned blowpipe. This weekend it emerged that six EastEnders characters are to get the chop. Some of them are long-standing and beloved, like Charlie Slater and Minty. He said that it was 'a tremendously bad idea'. Phil Daniels who played Kevin Wicks in the soap, criticised the axing of Charlie along with five other axings, as they were "good characters".