Dear Ann,
My longest-running, most reliable knittertainment, by far, is the British soap opera EastEnders, a multi-family, working-class drama that has been running continuously since 1985. I started watching it about ten years after that, a few years before my kids were born. I know this because in early 1997, I was standing in front of the TV, rocking a sleepy newborn, when the EastEnders theme started playing. Whereupon the baby started kicking and squirming with excitement. She recognizes the song, I thought, in wonder but with a touch of alarm. If only she had been hearing as much Mozart in utero!
(The Queen Vic, the beating heart of Albert Square.)
I watch EastEnders on WLIW, a New York PBS station (which routinely has threatened to cancel it if EastEnders fans don’t step up enough during pledge drives). For years, I annoyed family and friends by rushing from the dinner table (or the dishwasher) on Saturday nights, to closet myself for an hour for my weekly two-episode fix. (In contrast to American soap operas, where a single tragic scene can seem to drag on for years, EastEnders plotlines come at you fast. You miss an episode and an entire family can be gone from Walford the next time you tune in.)
(Peggy Mitchell and her sons Grant and Phil, both definitive wide boys.)
The advent of the digital video recorder changed all that. In recent years, I’ve stockpiled as many as 60 episodes at a time, and then binge-watched them through massive garter stitch projects, happy as a clam. The thing about WLIW, though, is that it only airs two episodes a week, while three or four episodes (Brits please advise) appear each week in the UK, so there is an ever-growing time lag. At this point, I’m almost 10 years behind the current state of EastEnders. (Once, on a trip to London, I made the mistake of watching a current episode. What I saw was devastating: everyone was mourning the tragic (but unexplained in that episode) death of a major character. For years, every time that character appeared, I was waiting for tragedy to strike. Which it did, but it took its time.)
(They are standing in front of of the Queen Vic, but I have no idea who any of these characters are. It’s like time travel!)
To get a sense of the epic scope of EastEnders, here’s a précis of past characters, and here’s Wikipedia. (If you already watch the show, be careful; I got a major spoiler from reading the Wiki.) (If you watch the show in the US, don’t even think about going here. Your brain cannot handle all the spoilers. TRUST ME ON THIS.) To watch EastEnders in the US, google “how to watch EastEnders in the US;” there seem to be many options, paid and free. Even if WLIW is available to you, I don’t recommend that you start there. I’m in a pickle about the idea of somehow catching up, so that if WLIW ever does cancel it, I won’t lose 10 years. But I don’t want to jump ahead, so I continue to hope that if WLIW leaves me in the soup, the Internet will come to my aid.
(Bianca and Kat, on the market. I got a spoiler just from this picture. Be careful out there.)
What do I like about the show? The never-heard-in-America accents, the characters, the acting chops on display in every episode, the detailed, realistic interior and exterior sets. Dot Cotton! Pat Evans! Peggy Mitchell! They have comforted me in grief and made me laugh out loud a thousand times. I understand — at best, on a good day– 70 percent of the dialogue, even when replayed. No quarter is given to the slow of understanding. You get the slang and the accents, or you don’t. There is no plot exposition or review. You find out about things from characters’ conversation (just as you find about things in real life). Nobody ever looks into the camera and says, “For our overseas viewers, that was Cockney rhyming slang meaning she’s lying.” Characters refer back to events of decades ago, and if you don’t get it, too bad; wait and see if you can figure it out from something someone else says or does. The relationships and story lines are byzantine in complexity, sometimes very realistic–too realistic–and sometimes laughably implausible. (Original gangsters abound.) The love stories are hot and heavy, and the “wrinklies” stories are hilarious, heartwarming, and occasionally hot and heavy. The writers establish a character as nasty or corrupt, and then, weeks or months later, show you an entirely believable sympathetic side. You can take nothing for granted.
One of our friends from the old Liberty knitters group in London once told me that the show had “too much shouting” for her. I disagree. EastEnders has just the right amount of shouting. The only thing it lacks–and it’s a big gaping hole in the fictional Borough of Walford–is a yarn shop. Wild and Woolly would be a perfect setting for all manner of hijinks and hairpulling.
Hope everyone is having a lovely, lazy Sunday and a delightful Father’s Day. Get out there and barbecue something.
Love,
Kay
Scott & Bailey, season 3 was just released on Netlix (DVD)…can’t imagine that it’s not a favorite , too. Watched episode 1 of the season last night. Didn’t disappoint!
There is a way! IT’s called VPN. If you would like to email me I can “talk” you through it, me old China (bit of cockney there!)
As a fellow Eastenders fan from the UK, I agree about the need for a yarn shop. In the very early days, Kathy Beale had a knitting stall or handmade jumper stall on the market, but, I think she went over to the dark side and got a knitting machine. My sister recently started watching it after a gap of a few years and asked for a summary of what had happened – we couldn’t believe how many characters had gone and returned.
You clearly need some of this tea to drink while you watch.
http://www.teasource.com/collections/black-tea/products/albert-square-black-tea-blend?variant=6563620931
Ha, what a find. Though this is why I seldom order tea while traveling in Ireland or the UK: “a very hearty British-style tea blend . . . takes milk and sugar very well . . .” – not unlike boiled coffee. China tea for me, please, or a nice Darjeeling.
This wasn’t actually a find. I drink this tea daiky at lunch. Married to a Brit, I apprec a real cuppa.
Appreciate!
I gave up on ‘Stenders a good while ago but have just checked and it looks to be on between three and four times a week. So the gap could be widening. It is amazing how some of the original cast are still there. And surprisingly, BBC I player, which is for catching up on recent shows, had a show listed from 1986. There were the smiling faces of Angie and Den Watts. Oh the drama!
I, too watch WLIW! what would Friday night be with the Britcoms … I’ve been introduced to so many great shows. Not merely “Doc Martin,” but “My Hero,” ” Goodnight Sweetheart”, and even though I’ve seen every episode, I still love “As Time Goes By.” I’ve only seen the occasional Eastender, but I know that an amazing amount of talent goes into – and out of – that show. Even, I believe Miss Denker from Downton … I think .
Hope your day goes well.
Yarn Shop indeed! “I’m knitting a sweater for Jerome. No, I’m knitting a sweater for Jerome!” [catfight ensues]
Every time we meet a British person, stateside or in during any of the small amount of time we have spent in Britain, my husband ( an EE fan for many years) has to bring up Frank Butcher.
Well of course he does. One of the best characters ever.
A yarn shop on the square would be a good idea. Maybe next door to the Queen Vic, so the mayhem could spill both ways…”Why’d you throw that pint at me, you slag?” … “Why’d you stick me with those DPNs?” … “Aargh! Watch the beads!!”
I don’t know if this show has captions, but if so, that might help sort out tricky dialogue. I was rescued from confusion in another PBS program some years ago. The story took place in Wales: the accents were very dense and often the speakers didn’t face the camera and were hard to hear. I know that sometimes the captions folks go off the rails, but I thought it was worth suggesting.
I love a good show on the telly, and after nearly 40 years of inundating my brain wif ve accents of the British Isles (fanks mum, for turning on “Upstairs Downstairs” at an early age!), my friends are often subject to a bit of crass fakery when I get a mood on!
Appreciate your honesty re not understanding the varied dialects all of the time. I love “Vera” (God who doesn’t love Brenda B? She’s my middle aged role model of shambling, bucket-hatted hard-drinking wisdom), but like yourself only catch about 85% of it.
Oddly, I found a guide to cockney speech patterns and slang in the back pages of “The Midwife,” the book upon which “Call the midwife” is based. The author offered some linguistic insights into this dialect, which the nurses had to untangle as a necessity: what if your client is trying to tell you something about her baby or her belly but you can’t decipher it? Or worse, making a joke on you that you’re oblivious to? It’s fascinating and funny, the cockney manner of rhyming pairs of words to stand for the English. A hidden language! Might be useful to you.
As for me, I will google how to watch EE and look forward to years of catching up!
Another EE fan here. started watching when WLIW showed it FOUR NIGHTS a week! yes ! and then the big cutback to two a week… and now we are so far behind as you mention.
I also dvr them and then do a binge watch.. if it werent for the fact that i have to mow the yard and do some last plantings and that there is a TON of good stuff on tonight – new ENDEAVOUR! the last VICIOUS! the beginning of the TUNNEL all on PBS and then GOT VEEP AND SV on HBO… thank goddesses for dvrs and repeat play on PBS and HBO!
as for reading about the current state in Albert Square well, sometimes i do and sometimes i dont. still doesnt hurt my enjoyment. i know what happens to Natalie and Dot and Peggy and Grant and … but i still like to see how the stories are developed and after all its all that interaction and drama in 25 minutes!
as for watching shows in UK there are tricks and ways and means. email privately and i will divulge.
Two words that will change your life (as they have mine): Closed Captioning.
I watched Eastenders for years on PBS. In the mid-1990s I was visiting a friend in Wales and remember his mum was watching Eastenders on telly and she said brokenly: “They are burying ______ today.” Of course I was several years behind and the news broke my heart!
I loved Ethel and Dot!
Oh good grief, this addiction of yours is seriously worrying! I’m British and can’t stand East Enders. We are quite a nation of soap addicts though: Coronation Street, set in the no-longer-so-grimy North West has been on our screens since 1960, whilst the grandaddy of all our soaps is The Archers, on the radio since January 1951, no less. (A bit controversial recently, though, with accusations of plot-line sensationalism levelled at The Archers producer, who interestingly has now moved on to East Enders. We think he’ll be more at home there).
There must be yarn shops “up west” but since characters only leave the square to die or just disappear for years, it seems that buying wool is a risky business.
Well, I’m responding to this a bit late. I’ve become addicted to this show now. i’m also watching on WLIW. I realized they were 10 years behind when I saw that NO ONE had a smart phone! IPhones hadn’t even been introduced yet.
As for a yarn shop, the real-life I Knit London shop isn’t so far away. I was in London last May, but I didn’t make it there for their weekly knit-in. Maybe next year, as we may go again.
Kay, if you haven’t realized it yet, you must use closed-captions to follow the dialogue in all British shows. I started doing this years ago. Now I even use it for American TV, as my hearing seems to be getting worse.
I have heard about this show for years, and I see it as a choice on my Amazon prime or possibly Britbox or Acorn, but the fact that the farthest back it goes is the 61st season puts me off. I would love to go much farther back!
Also, someone mentioned Coronation Street. When I was a teenager (late sixties-early seventies) we lived in Detroit and could get Channel 9 from Windsor which showed it every Sunday. It’s set in Liverpool, not far from where my parents grew up in North Wales, and where I still have family. My mother loved the characters – they seemed so homey and familiar to anyone who grew up in a small town or close knit neighborhood. Her favorite character was Hilda Ogden (jean Alexander). I loved the show and Hilda and all the others too. We watched in reilgiously for years. I think I was up to grandchildren of the characters I’d started with, but then moved away, dropped cable and lost track of it. I also see tthat it’s available through on of the wervices, but again, I don’t know any of the characters now. That’s one I would watch through from the beginning, if I could.