--- title: "EastEnders" year: 1985 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/eastenders" fi1m_id: "eastenders" imdb_id: "tt0088512" tmdb_id: 1871 wikidata_id: "Q607514" fi1m_score: 70 critics_score: 70 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-10-07T12:26:42.055948+00:00" updated: "2026-10-07T12:26:49.382478+00:00" region: "FI" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # EastEnders (1985) Created by Julia Smith, Tony Holland · 30m · Soap, Drama, Crime ## Identity EastEnders - **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/eastenders - **Type:** Series - **Fi1m ID:** eastenders - **IMDb ID:** tt0088512 - **TMDB ID:** 1871 - **Wikidata ID:** Q607514 - **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088512/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/1871, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q607514 **Fi1m score: 70** · Critics 70 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Forty years of grey mornings, slammed doors and the Queen Vic changing hands, and we still care who gets the keys > Four decades on, the Square is still the bleakest street in British television and still, in a good week, the best written. Between the good weeks there is a great deal of shouting in the café, and we would not pretend otherwise. ## Synopsis Albert Square, Walford, in the East End of London, February 1985. The first series runs 91 half-hour episodes, each one ending on a drum roll. Angie Watts (Anita Dobson) keeps a smile up over a marriage that is coming apart in front of the whole Square. Sue Osman (Sandy Ratcliff) is tired of hearing everyone else’s business and tired of being asked about her own. Teenage Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) wants a life beyond his family’s market stall. Over the first year Dot Cotton (June Brown) arrives, with a cigarette, a Bible and an opinion on everyone. Every secret on the Square is public property, and the pub is where it gets discussed. ## Review Julia Smith and Tony Holland built Albert Square in 1985 and it has been running ever since: 91 episodes in the first year, more than 200 a year since 2002, forty-two series so far. A soap cannot be reviewed the way a film is, because nobody has seen all of it, including the people who make it. What we can do is say what it is for and what it is like on an ordinary Tuesday. On an ordinary Tuesday it is still better than it needs to be, and worse than its best weeks suggest. The idea was a London square where everybody knows the price of everybody else’s secrets, and where the pub, the café, the launderette and the market are the only places anyone goes. The first reviews in 1985 thought it a competent copy of soaps that already existed and doubted it would ever be distinctive. It became distinctive by being bleaker than any of them. Nobody on the Square is allowed a happy marriage for more than a series, and nobody gets to leave quietly. Keith Harris’s set is the show’s real lead. The Vic sits on the corner, the terraces face it, and the market runs along the side, and the whole arrangement is small enough that any two characters can collide in under a minute of screen time, which is the engine of the thing. Tom Kingdon’s cameras give it flat, overcast light; nobody in Walford has ever enjoyed a sunset. Simon May wrote the theme, and the drum roll that ends each episode is the most efficient cliffhanger device on British television. Editors like Nick Pitt cut every half hour to the same shape: a row, a reveal, a face, the drums. The actors have to carry writing that is, by volume, mostly plumbing, and the good ones do it by playing the pauses. Anita Dobson’s Angie Watts set the pattern early, brittle behind the bar and wrecked behind the door. June Brown’s Dot Cotton was the show’s conscience for decades, a woman who disapproves of everyone and forgives all of them, and Brown could make a line about the washing sound like scripture. Adam Woodyatt’s Ian Beale is the Square’s great survivor, a man whose every bad decision and every bad haircut has happened on this set, and that is a kind of acting nobody else in the country is asked to do. More recently Max Bowden’s Ben Mitchell and Tony Clay’s Callum Highway have been given a relationship written with more patience than the Square usually allows, and Emma Barton’s Honey Mitchell is the rare resident who seems to like living there. Here is what has got at us. In 2018 the programme stopped its own drama to let real families speak about children they had lost to knives, and we sat in silence for a while after the drums. In 2020 it came back under social-distancing rules with scenes shot through doorways and across the width of the Square, and it was quicker and sharper than it had been for years, as if the restriction had done the writers a favour. And there are months, whole months, when every scene is two people in the café telling each other things they both already know, and we have switched off and felt no guilt about it. The faults are the faults of the form. Everyone on the Square has been bereaved, imprisoned or both, so the misery stops registering as misery and becomes weather. The 12 certificate is honest; this is not a programme for children, and it has not been for a long time. The directors’ list runs from Antonia Bird to Tom Hooper, which tells you the show has been a school for forty years as well as a serial. Do not start on a random Tuesday. Find a big week, the kind the trailers announce, and give it the full thirty minutes and the drums. If the Square does not hold you by the second episode it never will, and if it does, we are sorry, because there are forty-two series of it. *Fi1m score 70, published 7 October 2026.* ## Straight answers **Is EastEnders worth watching?** *EastEnders* is worth watching for anyone who wants a bleak, well-built London soap and is prepared to pick the right week, and we scored it 70. On a good week the writing is as sharp as anything on British television; on an ordinary one it is a great deal of shouting in the café. Start with a big week, not a random Tuesday. **How long is EastEnders, and what is it rated?** *EastEnders* has episodes of about 30m. It is a soap and drama series. **Where can I watch EastEnders in Finland?** *EastEnders* is not on any streaming or rental service in Finland at the moment. It is available in 2 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily. **How violent or frightening is EastEnders, and is it suitable for children?** *EastEnders* carries a UK 12 certificate and is not a programme for children, nor has it been for a long time. The violence is mostly off-screen or emotional, but everyone on the Square has been bereaved, imprisoned or both, and the misery is constant rather than shocking. Teenagers will manage; younger children will find it grim and dull. **How does EastEnders compare to Coronation Street?** *EastEnders* is the bleaker and [*Coronation Street*](https://film.one/tv/coronation-street) the warmer and funnier of the two, and both are built around a pub where every secret becomes public. Walford allows nobody a happy marriage for more than a series; Weatherfield at its best is humane and sharply observed, though on bad nights it mistakes catastrophe for drama. If you want gloom, go east; if you want laughs with your heartbreak, go north. **What should I watch after EastEnders?** After *EastEnders*, try [*Coronation Street*](https://film.one/tv/coronation-street) (1960, Fi1m 74): The northern original, warmer and funnier, with the same pub at its centre. Then [*Our Friends in the North*](https://film.one/tv/our-friends-in-the-north) (1996, Fi1m 88): Thirty years of one street’s lives, done in nine hours instead of forty; and [*Shameless*](https://film.one/tv/shameless) (2004, Fi1m 75): The Chatsworth estate, drunk and unrepentant, where the misery is played for laughs. ### Reviews we read (4) - **Radio Times**, David Brown (80/100, inferred): Brown calls the moment between Ian and Phil a raw, touching, deliberately uncomfortable highlight. He praises Phil giving Ian a shoulder to cry on as unexpectedly moving television. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/soaps/eastenders/eastenders-review-ian-and-phil-showed-us-that-even-soaps-need-a-bit-of-male-bonding/) - **The i Paper**, David Brown (75/100, inferred): The critic finds the show’s return pacy and smart, while questioning the timing of revealing Chantelle’s fate. They praise the inventive filming techniques that helped the soap resume production under social-distancing rules. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/eastenders-return-bbc1-chantelle-death-review-639401) - **The Guardian**, Hugh Hebert (45/100, inferred): Hebert sees a competent, familiar soap that feels like a copy of existing successes. He singles out its realistic presentation, but doubts whether its mix of characters will make it distinctive. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/20/eastenders-first-episode-february-1985) - **Digital Spy**, Sophie Dainty (85/100, inferred): The critic calls the episode a powerful, important triumph despite its unconventional approach. She especially praises the real-life testimonies and the way they bring the lasting impact of knife crime into focus. [Read](https://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/eastenders/a861090/eastenders-funeral-knife-crime-episode-review/) ## Details - **Created by:** Julia Smith, Tony Holland - **Creator:** Julia Smith, Tony Holland - **Director:** Clive Arnold, Bill Hays, Barry Letts, Mike Gibbon, Chris Clough, Antonia Bird, Matthew Robinson, Garth Tucker, Bill Gilmour, Ian Barnes, Karl Neilson, Tony Virgo, Julia Smith, Stephen Butcher, Henry Foster, Steve Finn, Toby Frow, Graeme Harper, Chris Lovett, Romey Allison, William Slater, Peter Moffatt, Tom Kingdon, Jeremy Ancock, Sallie Aprahamian, Malcolm Taylor, Richard Lynn, Nicholas Prosser, Jean Stewart, Mervyn Cumming, Paul Annett, John Greening, Jennie Darnell, Alan Wareing, David Tucker, Paulette Randall, William Sinclair, Ronald Wilson, Michael Keillor, Rick Platt, Edward Bazalgette, Makalla McPherson, John Bruce, Kate Saxon, Alice Troughton, Richard Holthouse, Paul Harrison, Jane Ashmore, SJ Clarkson, Christine Lalla, Thomas Hescott, Michael Owen Morris, Ian Barber, Paul Unwin, Frank Cox, Gill Wilkinson, James Kent, Ron Craddock, Susan Tully, John Howlett, Neil Alderton, Laurence Wilson, Claire Winyard, Kay Patrick, Jamie Annett, Angie de Chastelai Smith, Andy Hay, Tom Hooper, Piotr Szkopiak, Bill Britten, Rob Evans, Tim Leandro, Lance Kneeshaw, Afia Nkrumah, Ian White, Jeremy Silberston, Audrey Cooke, Michael Kerrigan, Steve Goldie, Indra Bhose, Mike Lloyd, Gerald Blake, Jeremy Brock, Sarah Harding, David Andrews, Jon East, Gareth Gwenlan, Andrew Morgan, Keith Boak, Emma Bridgeman-Williams, Bren Simson, Christopher Reason, Richard Kinon, Michael Robartes, Nick Prosser, Gareth Tucker, Bill Lyons, Lee Salisbury, Vito Rocco - **Writer:** Matt Evans, Julia Smith, Nicholas Hicks-Beach, Tony Jordan, Rosemary Mason, Bill Lyons, Matthew Cooper, Tony McHale, Rob Gittins, Jane Hollowood, Daran Little, Jeff Povey, Michael Robartes, Gilly Fraser, Charlie Humphreys, Juliet Ace, Simon Ashdown, Tony Holland, Liane Aukin, Gerry Huxham, Natalie Mitchell, Lauren Klee, Peter Batt, Katie Douglas, Tony Bilbow, Robert Butler, Shirley Cooklin, Colin Wyatt, Julia Honour, John Maynard, Gillian Richmond, Carey Andrews, Billy Hamon, Richard Davidson, Harry Duffin, Susan Boyd, Davey Jones, Pete Lawson, Paul Quiney, Alex Straker, Jaden Clark, Jessica Lea, Jesse O'Mahoney, Liz Lake, Dare Aiyegbayo, Mark Wheatley, Peter Mattessi, Al Hunter Ashton, Ayshe Raif, Robin Allen, Allan Swift, Emilia di Girolamo, Johnny Barrington, Simon Ashford, Laura Poliakoff, Joanna Toye, Maureen Chadwick, Sarah Daniels, Jim Hawkins, Paul Matthew Thompson, Wendy Granditer, Tim Stimpson, Anji Loman Field, Hugh Miller, John Oakden, Leo Richardson, Chris Murray, Kathrine Smith, David Ashton, Christopher Mattocks, Tom Bidwell, Annie Wood, Guido Casale, Sarah Hooper, Lisselle Kayla, Julia Schofield, Carl Rigg, Jack Lewis, David Hopkins - **Story:** Art Young - **Cinematography:** Tom Kingdon - **Editor:** Tony Holland, Hugh Parson, Nick Pitt, Rob Platt, Morag Bain - **Music:** Simon May, Keith Harris, Anita Dobson, Stewart James, Bradley James - **Production design:** Keith Harris - **Costume design:** Lisa Benjamin - **Producer:** Lorraine Newman, Corinne Hollingworth, Sean O'Connor - **Cast:** Max Bowden as Ben Mitchell; Clay Russell as Bobby Beale; June Brown as Dot Cotton; Tony Clay as Callum Highway; Jessica Plummer as Chantelle Atkins; Anita Dobson as Angie Watts; Aidan O'Callaghan as Lewis Butler; Don Gilet as Lucas Johnson - **Runtime:** 30m - **Release (Finland):** 19 February 1985 - **Genres:** Soap, Drama, Crime ## Where to watch in Finland Not streaming, renting or buying in Finland at the last check. Also available in: GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - BAFTA Television Awards 2016: British Academy Television Awards (won) ## If you liked this - *Coronation Street* (1960), Fi1m 74: The northern original, warmer and funnier, with the same pub at its centre. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/coronation-street.md) - *Brookside* (1982): Liverpool close, real houses, and harder politics than Walford ever attempted. - *Our Friends in the North* (1996), Fi1m 88: Thirty years of one street’s lives, done in nine hours instead of forty. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/our-friends-in-the-north.md) - *Shameless* (2004), Fi1m 75: The Chatsworth estate, drunk and unrepentant, where the misery is played for laughs. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/shameless.md) - *Dallas* (1978): The American model of the family at war, with oil instead of a pub. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/eastenders