\naddict. Anybody reading this who doesn’t have access to BBC television will
\nprobably be at a loss to understand this reference to the long-running TV soap
\nopera, which takes place in “Albert Square,” a fictional postal address in
\nLondon’s East End. I, like millions of other middle-class Brits (though I’m
\nonly half Brit, and that by dint of passport only, not birth), go slumming in
\nAlbert Square four times each week for a half hour starting at 7.30 or 8.0.
And Janine Butcher<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why do we like it so much that we weep at I As Of All I’m <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am an EastEnders addict. Anybody reading this who doesn’t have access to BBC television will probably be at a loss to understand this reference to the long-running TV soap opera, which takes place in “Albert Square,” a fictional postal address in London’s East End. I, like millions of other middle-class Brits (though I’m only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-c7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI mean “slumming.” The whole point of the series is that the highest moral type
\nyou encounter in EE <\/i>is the lovable
\nrogue. Otherwise the dramatis personae<\/i>
\nconsist of an entire catalogue of villainy, from Falstaffian slightly bent to
\nIago-like pure evil. There are no virtuous women living in Albert Square, and
\nno honest men. Even the children, though charming, are adept at calculating the
\nodds.![\"200px-Janine_Butcher.jpeg\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/200px-Janine_Butcher.jpeg?resize=200%2C217\")
<\/span><\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n<\/p>\n
\nthe very idea of missing an installment of this weekly brew of nastiness? The obvious answer, that it’s the
\nbest-written, best-directed thing on TV, isn’t the whole story. It’s true that
\nthe dialogue is so up-to-the-minute that it doesn’t simply reflect non-Received
\nPronunciation speech (the accent is not really the Cockney implied by the
\nlocation, so much as it is the Estuary English now spoken by nearly all
\nuneducated Londoners – and by a great many educated ones as well). In some
\ncases, I’d claim, EE<\/i> actually sets
\nthe linguistic trends.
\nmet some of the writers a dozen or more years ago in – of all places – Almaty
\nin Kazakhstan. (It’s a long story, but they were there to help found the Kazakh
\nTV industry.) Many of them were
\nupper-middle class public-school (or equivalent) educated kids from
\nprofessional families living somewhere like Hampstead; but my god, did they
\nhave acute ears. They were true professionals, also, in the sense of being able
\nto anticipate the next social problem that would affect those beneath them –
\nway beneath them, as they were better paid than I was – on the socio-economic
\nladder. Whether it was single motherhood, abortion, gay schoolboys, obesity or
\nbaby-snatching – the EE<\/i> writers were
\nthere before the broadsheet papers even noticed there was a problem.
\nGovernments could have done worse than use them as consultant forecasters.
\nfor the directors – these vary from programme to programme and week to week, as
\ndo the writers. But they all have in common the breathless speed with which the
\ncuts proceed in each episode. Remark on something to someone watching with you,
\nand you’ve missed the next vital cue. Watching EE<\/i> demands such mental agility that I’d argue that it improves the
\nviewer’s reasoning powers, maybe even increases your IQ. It certainly does
\nwonders for your grasp of social issues; and by making the sufferers characters
\nthat you care about, gives you a certain sympathy with people that likes of
\nwhom you – the comfortable, middle-class viewer with a university degree – will
\nprobably never encounter in real life.
\ncourse I should hasten to add here that the colossal viewing figures for EastEnders<\/i> couldn’t possibly be made up
\nexclusively of middle-class people. A good many viewers, perhaps a majority,
\nmight come from the traditional working-classes (if there are any of these left)
\nand from the underclass, for whom a TV set is one of the rights of life. (This is probably the place to say that I
\nhave an ancestral tie myself, if not to Albert Square, to the Whitechapel
\ndistrict of the East End, from where my maternal grandparents emigrated to the
\nUSA – though I don’t actually know whether either of them was born in London.
\nWe still have plenty of family in London, although we’ve lost touch with them.)
\nthis is by way of saying how much pleasure I got from this week’s Diary in The Spectator<\/i>. The genius who edits it
\nhas commissioned Steve John Shepherd, who plays the character of Michael Moon
\nin EastEnders<\/i> to write it today. In his first paragraph he writes about an
\nAsian man who recognises him in a branch of (the middle-class shop) Marks &
\nSpencer, and calls him “a very naughty man.” Says Mr Shepherd, his interlocutor
\nobviously “enjoys the psychological torture my character …in EastEnders<\/i> inflicts on people.” Myself,
\nI love Michael Moon – he’s handsome, charming, and has married and had a child
\nwith the female Iago called Janine Butcher. So wicked is Janine that she became
\na Jewish convert in order to marry a rich man, whom she then murdered. It’s a brave fellow that takes on Janine,
\neven if he is himself being transformed “into the devil’s son.”
\nafraid I must have missed some of the episodes in which Michael’s “diabolical
\nstature” grew. I certainly did not catch the programme in which he was shown
\nreading the Times Literary Supplement<\/i>
\non a bench in Albert Square. I regret this omission more than I can say. I am
\nvery cross indeed with the TLS<\/i> just
\nat the moment, as they recently ran a cover piece on a book to do with food
\nthat was so incompetent that I felt bound to write a personal note of complaint
\nto the Editor. I feel the piece did a great deal of damage to the fledgling
\nacademic field of food studies, and that it was unforgivable of the TLS<\/i> to print such a foolish piece, let
\nalone put it on the cover. If I hadn’t been associated with the paper for about
\n40 years, both as reviewer and reader, I’d cancel my subscription. I wonder if
\nthat was the number of the TLS <\/i> Michael Moon was shown reading in Albert
\nSquare?