BFI POLL SNUBS EASTENDERS

Series Fails to Make So-Called Industry Experts
Top 100 Best British TV List


By Larry Jaffee


Please explain to me how EastEnders can fail to make the British Film Institute’s (BFI) 100 Greatest British Television programmes, but win in 1997 the “Best Drama” award (not Best Soap Opera) from the prestigious British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA)?

I would like to suggest that EastEnders’ omission from the list has less to do with its quality and more to do with the snobbishness of the 1,000 television industry professionals selected by the BFI to vote in the survey.

I know this firsthand, as the publisher of the Walford Gazette, the only printed publication in the world dedicated to EastEnders. So, yes I do have a vested interest in seeing EastEnders get its due share of kudos. And granted, I am an affirmed Anglophile who sooner would watch anything British in the cinema or on telly than the latest Hollywood by-product. But I am also a veteran journalist, currently editor of a business magazine owned by a major British media company.

In the course of doing my job, whenever I encounter British executives and tell them about my “side business,” I’m usually greeted with “you’re joking, of course.” And when I assure them, “No, I’m perfectly serious,” and in fact, that the Walford Gazette has a circulation of 3,000 in the United States, where EastEnders enjoys a cult following, there’s usually an admission along the lines of “Well, yes, I have seen it, but you should really talk to my wife.”

I can’t imagine that the 15 to 20 million U.K. viewers who tune into EastEnders are only women. It would seem that so many in U.K. media business think of EastEnders as no more than a light form of entertainment.

Yes, Americans tend to regard EastEnders as a drama, and not a soap, but I’m not sure that this dichotomy of how the series is perceived on the different sides of the Atlantic has something to do with class or gender.

Incidentally, Coronation Street, EastEnders’ main soap competition, came in at No. 40, and was the only soap to make the list. EastEnders inexplicably finished 130th.

And, just to set the record straight, I agree with the BFI pundits who chose Fawlty Towers as the Greatest British Television programme.


The British Film Institute’s Top 100 All-Time British TV Programmes

1. Fawlty Towers
2. Cathy Come Home (The Wednesday Play)
3. Doctor Who
4. The Naked Civil Servant
5. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
6. Blue Peter
7. Boys From The Blackstuff
8. Parkinson
9. Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister
10. Brideshead Revisited
11. Abigail’s Party (Play for Today)
12. I, Claudius
13. Dad’s Army
14. The Morecambe & Wise Show
15. Edge of Darkness
16. Blackadder Goes Forth
17. Absolutely Fabulous
18. The Wrong Trousers
19. The World At War
20. The Singing Detective
21. Pennies From Heaven
22. The Jewel in the Crown
23. Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
24. Hancock/Hancock’s Half Hour
25. Our Friends in the North
26. 28 Up
27. The War Game (The Wednesday Play)
28. The Magic Roundabout
29. That Was The Week That Was
30. An Englishman Abroad
31. The Royle Family
32. Life On Earth
33. The Old Grey Whistle Test
34. University Challenge
35. Porridge
36. Blue Remembered Hills (Play for Today)
37. Mastermind
38. I’m Alan Partridge
39. Cracker
40. Coronation Street
41. Top of the Pops
42. Inspector Morse
43. Grange Hill
44. Steptoe and Son
45. Only Fools and Horses
46. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (series 1)
47. Tiswas
48. Elgar (Monitor)
49. Nuts in May (Play for Today)
50. Father Ted
51. The Avengers
52. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
53. The Forsyte Saga
54. Hillsborough
55. Dennis Potter: The Last Interview (Without Walls Special)
56. Bar Mitzvah Boy (Play for Today)
57. Edna, The Inebriate Woman (Play for Today)
58. Live Aid for Africa
59. World In Action
60. Thunderbirds
61. Talking Heads/Talking Heads 2
62. Ready Steady Go!
63. Z Cars
64. Culloden
65. Ascent of Man
66. A Very British Coup
67. Civilisation
68. Prime Suspect
69. Likely Lads/Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?
70. Have I Got News for You?
71. The Snowman
72. Walking With Dinosaurs
73. Nineteen Eighty-Four
74. The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
75. Quatermass and the Pit
76. Between The Lines
77. Blind Date
78. Talking to a Stranger (Theatre 625)
79. The Borrowers
80. One Foot in the Grave
81. Later With Jools Holland
82. Tutti Frutti
83. The Knowledge
84. House of Cards
85. This is Your Life
86. The Tube
87. The Death of Yugoslavia
88. Till Death Do Us Part
89. A Very Peculiar Practice
90. Michael Moore’s TV Nation
91. This Life
92. Death on the Rock (This Week)
93. The Nazis - A Warning From History
94. Drop the Dead Donkey
95. Arena
96. The Railway Children
97. Teletubbies
98. Spitting Image
99. Pride and Prejudice
100. Made In Britain


Explanation From BFI Executive

By Pam Rostron

Assistant Keeper of Television, BFI Collections
(Editor’s note: I received the following e-mail in response to my letter that is reprinted on page 1.)

Thank you very much for your extremely detailed and interesting e-mail about the omission of EastEnders from the BFI’s TV100, which has been forwarded to me as I was the Project Champion for this vote.

I am also happy to reply because I am an EastEnders fan myself and see no dichotomy in enjoying the goings-on in Albert Square as well as The Cops or Pride and Prejudice.

The first thing I must say about the Top 100 is that the results were as much as a surprise to all of us at the bfi as they were to everyone else.

We had sent out 1,600 voting booklets to a wide variety of people working in the TV industry, including some of the major cast members of EastEnders like Wendy Richards (Ed. sic; I guess Wendy’s right by subtitling her book No ‘S’) and Barbara Windsor, so we certainly didn’t restrict it to male executives or makers of recognisably “highbrow” programmes.

The series received plenty of votes, and was actually placed at number 132 in the poll, but you are not the only person who has commented on the fact that it didn’t make the final 100, nor on the fact that Coronation Street only made number 40.

I suspect that the main reason it didn’t receive more votes is simply that continuing dramas like EastEnders, because they are always a presence on our TV screens and in our lives, tend to make less of a memorable impact than other dramas.

Dare I suggest that their familiarity perhaps makes them such a normal part of our daily TV viewing that they stand out less in our memories than things which we see once, have an enormous effect on us, and we then have no chance to reassess?

As with all soaps (I make no apologies for using that word, I don’t regard it as bad), EastEnders has had some truly outstanding moments. The Christmas Day episode where Den served Angie with her divorce papers is often quoted as one of the most memorable moments on TV, and I can instantly recall others, like Kathy’s rape by Willmott-Brown, or Grant playing the tape where Sharon confessed her infidelity to the whole of the Queen Vic.

Indeed, EastEnders is also often credited with having some of the best and most moving writing in TV drama today.

The two-hander episodes are something that no other drama would dare to tackle, and only recently we have seen some very poignant and emotional scenes between two of the oldest characters (which I won’t say any more about-I don’t know how up-to-date with the plots you are in the U.S.).

I hope I have been able to go some way towards allaying some of your concerns that we don’t value our popular programmes in the U.K. It’s a great shame that you are not in the U.K. at the moment as we would love to have invited you to tonight’s discussion on the TV100 at the NFT, so that you could have put your points in person.

Very best wishes, Pam Rostron


(Shortly after, I received a second e-mail from Ms. Rostron.)

Dear Larry,

I promised that I would let you know how the debate at the National Film Theatre went on Friday, 29th September, so here goes!

I’m sure you will be pleased to know that the absence of EastEnders from the Top 100 was commented on by the panel and members of the audience.

Many people felt as you did, that it was a snobbishness on the part of the industry not to recognize the popularity of the soaps.

Others felt that, as I suggested, they were such a regular part of TV viewing that voters simply hadn’t thought to put them in.

There were no overall conclusions drawn from the vote, other than that the Top 100 list was something all children should be given a chance to see, to make them aware of the richness of their television heritage.




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