Television
Selective amnesia
Marcus Berkmann
Soaps know no seasons. The rest of tele- vision may subside into summer lethargy but in EastEnders (BBC 1) the plot lines must prevail. The sheer density of events that pack these characters' lives would be too much for most real people, although the rules of the genre dictate that they never have more than one thing to worry about at any one time. So far this year Ian Beale has been preoccupied by the disap- pearance of his wife with two of their young children, by the growth of his business and by noisy neighbours, but never at the same time. Life as a soap character seems to require absolute resilience to the disasters meted out to you by ruthless scriptwriters, and a form of selective amnesia for all the disasters that have befallen you before.
Even the most efficient perpetual motion machine, though, will sputter and creak from time to time. At the moment Albert Square is harbouring a series of plot lines that either haven't got going yet or have all but blown themselves out. We all know that Ted Hills of the Brezhnev hairline and not fantastically well-capped teeth is about to disappear to Dubai for a year, but the question of whether his drab teenage daughter Sarah will accompany him has long ceased to be of the slightest interest. Sarah is the Square's token Christian, who mopes for Jesus and regularly gets things wrong in a way that television Christians often tend to. Last week she was definitely staying. On Monday she was definitely going. On Tuesday she definitely stayed. Now she will probably move in with her brother Tony, one of the current pair of token gays without which no fictional East End community can consider itself com- plete. But is he indeed gay? A few weeks ago he was dallying with spunky reporter Polly, until she Found Out What Was Really Going On. Both Tony and his main squeeze Simon, one should emphasise, fol- low now accepted ground rules for the depiction of homosexuals in prime-time television dramas by being aggressively uncamp, and not even dressing that well.
Meanwhile bullet-headed Phil, whose voice never rises above a whisper, has embarked upon a surely doomed affair with a fellow recovering alcoholic. In most episodes he goes round to her place, explains that they should end it all, and then sleeps with her. His long-suffering wife Kathy, who last smiled in 1989, sus- pects nothing, although some good argu- ments are doubtless in the offing. Phil's brother Grant doesn't approve. 'I've been there,' he says, his face creased with con- cern. And he will probably be there again, if his longing looks at whiny Lorraine are anything to go by. No one ever learns a les- son in EastEnders — or at least, if they do, they will have forgotten it again by a week next Tuesday.
And what of Bianca, Walford's ginger siren? She and Ricky are going on holiday to Paris, which we knew about before they did because we had read about it in the News of the World. A whole chunk of the cast are going there for five special episodes later this month, to pose photo- genically in front of the Eiffel Tower and be otherwise untouched by French culture in any way at all. But then EastEnders is never touched by any culture, French or otherwise. It inhabits a hermetically sealed universe of incident and argument, in which people exist only if they are within walking distance of the Queen Vic. When one set of characters moved to Camden Town a few years ago, they disappeared as completely as if they had moved to the Antarctic.
Much of the pleasure of EastEnders, and Conle and Brooky and the rest, is the pre- tence we all share that they are realistic. They aren't, of course: their notions of community are both shamelessly nostalgic and determinedly artificial. There's remarkably little prejudice in Albert Square, either racial or otherwise, and no one commutes to work. No one shops at Sainsbury's and it's always easy to catch a cab. No one ever uses a telephone. Every- one drinks at lunch-time. The police rarely make an appearance, but then there's no crime. Not one of the bar staff is Aus- tralian. No wonder 11 million of us tune in every single week.
Simon Hoggart is on holiday.
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