Eastenders
Doof, Doof, Doof, Doof, Doof, Doof, Doof! The opening intro of Eastenders works as a mise en scene. We are shown a satellite view of contemporary London and the Thames, immediately telling the viewers where historically, socially and geographically this television soap is set.
The audience is assumed to be older although it’s catered towards families too. Based on market research by BBC commissioning in 2003, EastEnders is mostly watched by 60- to 74-year-olds, closely followed by 45- to 59-year-olds. A lot of storylines in the soap affect younger characters which a younger audience could better relate to. The soap also assumes that the audience has seen the programme before. Being a near-40 year old programme, there isn’t time to re-establish characters and plots and even for most recent storylines there isn’t something like a recap preceding the episode to fill viewers in.
Helen Fulton says “Television speaks back to us and offers us ‘reality’ in the form of hyperbole and parody”. Eastenders does this, tackling real life issues and relationship dynamics that we all experience but done in a different reality. Watford itself, where Eastenders is set, doesn’t even exist in London. There is however the strange attempt to integrate big news stories from the real world into the soap. For example, there was a quickly filmed and inserted scene with some of the characters lamenting the recent death of the Queen. I always find this a bizarre choice because I never think of Eastenders being completely in reality despite the realistic storylines it tackles. I find it to be more distracting rather than the immersive feeling that I think they’re trying to provoke.
Eastenders also reinforces certain narrative myths such as the existence of innate morality and gender, the natural opposition between good and bad and between male and female, the episodic nature of life — natural or inevitable. Resolutions are reached and points of closure can be achieved. The latter I’m a particular fan of within the show and the best example of this can be found in the dreaded bin. No matter what is out in a bin in the soap, a pregnancy test, a secret document, somebody eventually will look in that bin and find it. No secret in the show is ever kept forever and every storyline has a conclusion, happy or sad ending.