‘Cor, stinks in here, dunnit?” At 7pm on 19 February 1985, we heard Simon May’s now-familiar theme tune and watched those wriggly River Thames titles for the first time – followed by that aromatic opening line of dialogue.
The BBC’s new soap opera was its attempt to make a mass-market, twice-weekly rival to ITV’s Coronation Street. Co-created by the producer Julia Smith and the writer Tony Holland, the gritty saga was set in a Victorian square in the fictional east London borough of Walford. Working titles for the show included Square Dance, Round the Houses and London Pride. They settled on EastEnders.
