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''EastEnders'' was launched at a critical moment in the BBC's history and was intended to demonstrate the BBC's ability to produce popular programming. It started airing on the night after a major identity change for the channel, with the show representing the "new face" of the BBC. Some critics at first derided the new offering, as it was clear that the BBC wished to bridge the gap between the network and its competitor, ITV. The BBC brass was vindicated, however, when ''EastEnders'' became wildly popular and displaced ''Coronation Street'' from the top of the ratings for the rest of the 1980s and much of the 1990s and 2000s. A previous UK soap set in an East End market was ATV's ''Market in Honey Lane'' between 1967 and 1969. However this show, which graduated from one showing a week to two in three separate series (the latter series being shown in different time slots across the ITV Network) was very different in style and approach to ''EastEnders''. The British Film Institute describe ''Market In Honey Lane'' thus: ''It was not an earth-shaking programme, and certainly not pioneering in any revolutionary ideas in technique and production, but simply proposed itself to the casual viewer as a mildly pleasant affair.'' 〔"()", ''BFI''. URL last accessed 28 May 2014〕 ''EastEnders'', while also featuring an East End street market, would be very different in its approach and impact. ==Conception and preparations for broadcast== In March 1983, just under two years before ''EastEnders'' hit the screen, the show was just a vague idea in the mind of a handful of BBC executives, who decided that what BBC1 needed was a popular bi-weekly drama series that would attract the kind of mass audiences ITV was getting with ''Coronation Street''. The first people to whom David Reid, then head of series and serials, turned were Julia Smith and Tony Holland, a well established producer/script editor team who had first worked together on ''Z-Cars''. The outline that Reid presented was vague: two episodes a week, 52 weeks a year. After the concept was put to them on 14 March 1983, Smith and Holland then went about putting their ideas down on paper; they decided it would be set in the East End of London. There was anxiety at first that the viewing public would not accept a new soap set in the south of England, though research commissioned by lead figures in the BBC had revealed southerners would accept a northern soap, northerners would accept a southern soap and those from the Midlands, as Julia Smith herself pointed out, did not mind where it was set as long as it was somewhere else. This was the beginning of a close and continuing association between ''EastEnders'' and audience research, which, though commonplace today, was something of a revolution in practice.〔 The show's creators were both Londoners, but when they researched Victorian squares, they found massive changes in areas they thought they knew well. However, delving further into the East End of London, they found exactly what they had been searching for: a real East End spirit — an inward looking quality, a distrust of strangers and authority figures, a sense of territory and community that the creators summed up as "Hurt one of us and you hurt us all".〔 These themes that were found for the setting can still be found in a present day episode of ''EastEnders''. When developing ''EastEnders'', both Smith and Holland looked at influential models like ''Coronation Street'', but they found that it offered a rather outdated and nostalgic view of working-class life. Only after ''EastEnders'' began, and featured the characters of Tony and Kelvin Carpenter, did ''Coronation Street'' start to feature black people, for example.〔"(Hole at the heart of the BBC )", ''The Telegraph''. URL last accessed 25 February 2007〕 They came to the conclusion that ''Coronation Street'' had grown old with its audience, and that ''EastEnders'' would have to attract a younger, more socially extensive audience, ensuring that it had the longevity to retain it for many years thereafter.〔 They also looked at ''Brookside'' but found there was a lack of central meeting points for the characters, making it difficult for the writers to intertwine different storylines. So ''EastEnders'' was set in Albert Square. The first stage of the exterior set was built in 1984,〔 and had to be made to look as if it had been standing for years. This was done by a number of means, including chipping at the buildings with pickaxes. The ''EastEnders'' lot was designed by Keith Harris, who was a senior designer within the production team together with Supervising art directors Peter Findley and Gina Parr.〔 Then in 1986, he added an extension to the set, building the fourth side of Albert Square, and in 1987, Turpin Road was added, which included buildings such as The Dagmar. In 1993, George Street was added, and soon after Walford East tube station was built. The set was constructed by the BBC in house construction department under construction manager Mike Hagan. The initial build took 6 months to complete. The target launch date was originally January 1985.〔 Smith and Holland had just eleven months in which to write, cast and shoot the whole thing. However, in February 1984, they did not even have a title or a place to film. Both Smith and Holland were unhappy about the January 1985 launch date, favouring November or even September 1984 when seasonal audiences would be higher, but the BBC stayed firm, and Smith and Holland had to concede that, with the massive task of getting the Elstree Studios operational, January was the most realistic date. However, this was later to be changed to February. The project had a number of working titles — ''Square Dance'', ''Round the Square'', ''Round the Houses'', ''London Pride'', ''East 8''.〔"(What is the history of ''EastEnders''? )" ''BBC''. URL last accessed 24 September 2006〕 It was the latter that stuck (E8 is the postcode for Hackney) in the early months of creative process. However, the show was renamed after many casting agents mistakenly thought the show was to be called ''Estate'', and the fictional postcode E20 was created for Walford, instead of using E8. Julia Smith came up with the name ''Eastenders'' after she and Holland had spent months telephoning theatrical agents and asking "Do you have any real East Enders on your books?". However, Smith thought "''Eastenders''" "looked ugly written down" and was "hard to say", so decided to capitalise the second 'e'.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of EastEnders」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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