TV DRAMA REVIEW: EASTENDERS

Eastenders is a British soap opera that has been broadcasting since 1985 and has nearly 5000 episodes lasting on average 30 minutes. The opera has won a wide variety of awards including Best Soap & Continuing Drama, Best Drama Series, Best Story line and 309 more. Eastenders is set in the fictional borough Walford, East London, where it follows the everyday lives of its characters living in Albert Square. The viewers see the domestic and professional side of the characters, their families and community. Eastenders is prone to display a lot of conflict, relationships, hatred, love, crime and overall dramatic drama in every episode grabbing its millions of viewers daily.

Current Story line

Currently in Eastenders Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) is one of the main characters who features in every episode. His only daughter Lucy Beale was murdered, which is still being investigated by the police leaving incredibly stressed and emotionally depressed. After lying about where he was the night Lucy died his dirty secret finally came out that he was with a prostitute. This is bad news for Ian as he doesn't want his fiance Denise Fox (Dianne Parish) to found out as it could end their relationship. Luckily Ian's kind friend Mick Carter (Danny Dyer) who owns the famous Queen Victoria Pub, offers to cover up for him so everyone will think it was Mick who hired the prostitute. However Mick cannot keep the secret for long as it starts to tear his own family apart. But Mick isn't the only person who knows about Ian's dirty secret... Before Denise's step-dad Patrick Trueman (Rudolph Walker) suffered from a major stroke causing him to be hospitalized , he found out about Ian's secret after the prostitute returned back to Albert Square.Now Patrick is able to return home from hospital Ian starts to panic as Patrick comes to live with him and Denise whilst giving him full time care. Now being threaten by Mick and Patrick to tell the truth to Denise, who will tell her? Will Ian get a chance, or will someone else do it for him?

Audience
In my opinion I would say Eastenders' target audience is for ages above teenage years. I do not think it is suitable for young children as some episodes contain some subjects that are quiet distressing which they wouldn't be able to understand. These subjects include murder, death, illnesses, crime, family/relationship breakdown, the effects of alcohol and drug abuse.

Representation
Eastenders gives a snapshot of what life is like living in the East of London. In the program there are many different cultural, ethnic and minority groups including Muslims, Africans, Homosexuals and the British. This suggests that places within East London have these variety of groups as this is what Eastenders is representing. The characters all have fairly low paid jobs including working on a market stall, corner shop, public house, fast food restaurants and more. This suggests the real people living in East London do not have many luxuries and are all working class. Many residents may find this upsetting and unfair as everyone is putting into the same group due to only where they live

Narrative
There are always several mini narratives that all run alongside each other in every episode. The maximum number of story lines that can be played in one episode is six, because if there were more than the viewer would become too confused. However all these story lines are usually similar as they all build up to a dramatic ending where they all collide together to make one big huge story.

INTRODUCTION

My name is Victoria Amber Cowburn and I have chosen to study media studies at A Level as in the future, I would like a career in the media industry. I am very interested in television, film and photography which this course covers, therefore I assumed this course was perfect for me! I especially enjoy learning about the production and behind the scenes of films and television shows.
This blog is dedication to my media studies bridging unit work which will include reviews of film, television programs and annotations of a magazine cover. This work is to prepare me for AS where I will be analyzing TV dramas and examining how the British film industry manages to survive against the American. This means I need to prepare myself to understand and discuss the process of production, distribution, marketing, exchange and much more...