Eastenders- How it all began.

Eastenders first began as a vague idea in 1983. A handful of BBC executives  decided that BBC One needed a popular bi-weekly drama series that would attract a handful of audience. The BBC team turned to the producer/ scriptwriter team Julia Smith and Tony Holland.



Julia Smith and Tony Holland.



Julia Smith and Tony Holland were both londoners. Tony Holland was bought and bought up in the big East End. The two researched into Victoria Square to find dramatic changes happening in the area that they both thought that they knew. They both discovered that a real East End Spirit is an inward looking quality, distrust of strangers and authority figures, competition within territory and community this is what Holland and Smith summed up as ‘Hurt one of us and you hurt all of us’.



19 February 1985, the press were all invited to the set of EastEnders for the first launch ever which contained 24 characters who belonged to two family trees of the Fowlers and the Beales where the both familys lived in Albert Squeare.



EastEnders first ever title sequance