History
The idea for a new soap opera on BBC1 was conceived in 1983, by BBC executives, principally David Reid, the then Head of Series & serials, who was keen for the BBC to produce a new evening soap opera. They gave the job of creating this new soap to script writer Tony Holland and producer Julia Smith, famous for their work together on Z Cars. They created twenty-four original characters for the show, based upon Holland's own family, and people they remembered from their own experiences in the East End. Granada Television gave Smith unrestricted access to the Coronation Street production for a month so that she could get a sense how a continuing drama was produced.
They cast actors for their characters, and began to film the show at the BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. Alan Jeapes and Simon May created the title sequence and theme tune, and the show with a working title of East 8 was renamed EastEnders, when Smith and Holland realised they had been phoning casting agencies for months asking whether they had "any real East Enders" on their books. Julia Smith thought "Eastenders" "looked ugly written down", and capitalised the second 'e', and thus the name EastEnders was born. Filming commenced in late-1984 and the show was first broadcast on 19 February 1985, and became wildly popular, often displacing Coronation Street from the top of the ratings for the rest of the 1980s.
Read more about this topic: EastEnders
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