E20 – Not Your Old Man’s EastEnders
By Priscilla Mayfield
Watching the EastEnders Internet spin-off E20 I couldn’t help thinking of the brilliant Ben Elton’s “Nozin’ Aroun’”, a sketch from “Demolition,” the very first episode of The Young Ones in 1982.
You know, where the brilliant Ben is playing the host of a television show FOR (enthusiastic thumbs-up) young adults, BY (enthusiastic thumbs-up) young adults, which is also “not your (enthusiastic thumbs-up) old man’s” sort of television.
(Search for “Nozin’ Aroun’” on www.youtube.com if you haven’t seen it, or are seized with a sudden urge to see it again, as I am just from writing this.)
That was just what E20 looked like, if “Nozin’ Aroun’” had been a soap opera, and, as it turns out, that is pretty much what it is – written and acted BY young adults, FOR young adults. Our EastEnders too, to paraphrase “Nozin’ Aroun’”. For some unfathomable reason, E20 is “not available” to U.S. residents trying to get on the BBC E20 website, although you can watch nine minutes of the pilot episode on the youtube.com EastEnders channel by searching for: “Eastenders E20 - Series 1 - Episode 1 - Part 1.” (In Southern California, we were lucky enough to see it through the auspices of some expat Brits in our midst.) Released as part of regular OLD EastEnders’ 25th anniversary year commemoration, with the idea that it would bring in younger, Internetsavvy viewers, E20 also clearly serves notice that the show is still viable two decades and a half on. With which I think most of those reading this would agree. Not your old man’s EastEnders is represented by four disparate yet strangely sympathetic, problemridden teenagers, two girls, two boys, their ethnicities reflecting the multiculti East End … kind of an EastEnders brand-splitting along the lines of Muppet Babies or Tiny Toons.
One’s a scrappy amateur boxer who’s got a pesky, alcoholic deadbeat for a dad, one’s a self-aggrandizing wide boy who says his parents were killed in a “drive-by,” one is a sweet, extremely religious girl who finds herself pregnant, and the one with a permanent scowl has blue hair.
Individually, they don’t bear up under close scrutiny, with the exception of the very engaging Fatboy, he of the dead parents claim. Taken as a unit, however, there is some deep TVQ there. The appeal is heightened by the occasional Love Gift of an OLD EastEnders character floating through, starting off right with a very nice turn by Gran Slater, Mo Harris.
And it’s quite a startling treat to see the familiar Albert Square, which is almost, like the house in a Gothic novel, a character in its own right, peopled with new characters who act as if they have a right to be there.
The first release of E20 online was enough of a success that good things resulted. One good thing is that the show is being broadcast on regular television, BBC3, in an omnibus edition, making it potentially easier for those blocked from the Internet release to see. Another good thing is that a second season was commissioned, with an allnew cast of troubled teenies, set for a September 2010 release.
This paved the way for the popular original characters Leon the boxer, Fatboy the wide boy, Mercy the religious sweetie and Zsa-Zsa of the blue hair to be absorbed into the churning hive that is regular OLD EastEnders, yet another good thing.
And a little lagniappe, rife with comedy potential, is already starting to be fulfilled: Fatboy can be found on Twitter at , tweeting things like “Jim Branning is the OG. Original Gangsta,” and “Getting evils from Phil. KMT I could take him if I wanted…. But I gotta be somewhere.”
I don’t know what the new season will bring. I am going to go out on a limb here and guess there’ll be some teen angst, and some teen anomie, and quite probably a good deal of intergenerational disagreement, disapproval and nattering. And we welcome every bit.
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