Mo Butcher - Creation and Development

Creation and Development

1988 was a year of change on-screen in EastEnders. Since the show's inception in 1985 and up until 1988, one of the soap's main focal points, The Queen Victoria (The Vic) public house, had been inhabited by the Watts family; however, actors Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson who played landlords Den and Angie Watts resigned in 1988, meaning the soap's bosses had to find a new family to inhabit the Vic. Pat Wicks (Pam St Clement) and her boyfriend Frank Butcher (Mike Reid) were instilled as the new landlords, and along with Frank came his family, including his mother Mo (Edna Doré), who moved to Walford in September.

Mo was portrayed as a battle-axe. Author Hilary Kingsley has described Mo as a "tough, interfering busybody with a will of iron and a face of stone To her grandchildren she was always indulgent, but to Frank she was always the boss, a woman with a whim or iron." Kingsley surmised that "only slowly did Walford begin to see a softer side to hard bitten old Mo". Kingsley described Mo as a woman who sought status, suggesting that she wished to be "Queen Bee" when she moved to Walford and regarded Frank's new wife Pat as "nothing more than a pushy interloper". Initial storylines centred upon clashes between Pat and Mo, with Frank trying to find a compromise between the bickering women in his life. Kingsley has commented that "gradually some sort of compromise was worked out and slowly Mo became more human."

In 1990, a topical storyline was aired in which Mo was given Alzheimer's disease. During the year, Mo was shown to grow increasingly more forgetful, and after tests, Frank was informed that Mo was suffering with dementia. The storyline was scripted to show the effects on a family when a parent/loved one suffers from Alzheimer's. By November that year, Mo was in advanced stages of mental deterioration. It was at this stage that the character was written out of EastEnders, Edna Doré having decided to end her contract. On-screen, Mo was sent to live with her daughter in Colchester, having convinced herself that Frank wanted to kill her. Writer Colin Brake has suggested that the storyline had to be curtailed earlier than they would have liked due to Doré's desire to leave.

Commenting on her time in the soap and the reasons for her departure in 1999, Doré said, "I shall always be grateful to EastEnders. It gave me recognition. It was a marvellous opportunity to be known everywhere, although it totally changes your life. For a while I couldn't even go shopping without being stopped. But compared with the theatre or film it was lacking in job satisfaction because it was so quick. I did it for a couple of years. I didn't want to stay so long that I wouldn't be considered for other parts."

Mo was killed off-screen in 1992, succumbing to Alzheimer's; her death was confirmed on-screen in the New Year's Eve episode of 1992. Doré was at a New Year's Eve party when she discovered her character's fate. She commented in 2001, "I was at a New Year's Eve party when someone came up to me and said, 'Have you seen, you've been killed off?' And I heaved a sigh of relief and had another drink. Still I can't complain. I had a good time at EastEnders and the one advantage of having been in a soap is that I get far better paid for my roles now."