Birkwoods characters were all awful, apart from Lola and Micheal and even they are average at best

Not all of it!

We had around 7-8m viewers during his time, now we get 6-7,

That is LN's fault because she didnt do anything to keep viewers!

BK didnt these!

Phil Crack
Vic Fire
Peggys exit
Kat and Alfie return
Lillys birth
Stacey's exit
Baby swap
Phil stalker,
Ben/Heather storyline
Ben exit
Yusuf/Zainab abuse
B&B fire
Pats death
Janine's fortune

ect!

[quote=benbenalen;68666808]Not all of it!

We had around 7-8m viewers during his time, now we get 6-7,

That is LN's fault because she didnt do anything to keep viewers!

BK didnt these!

Phil Crack crap and unrelistic
Vic Fire crap
Peggys exit crap
Kat and Alfie return double crap
Lillys birth crap
Stacey's exit that as good
Baby swap triple crap
Phil stalker, crap and a crap outcome
Ben/Heather storyline that was ok
Ben exit that was ok too
Yusuf/Zainab abuse crap
B&B fire crap
Pats death that was ok
Janine's fortune crap and Janine has been crap ever since

all in all CRRRRRAP

The ultimate fault lies with both of them, yet EE has been in a downward spiral for 10 years, pretty much since Louise Berridge first had the idea to have a certain character step out of the shadows and sigh, "Hello Princess." Santar staunched the flow with his sensationalism, mainly to get people watching again after a dismal 2006. And it worked. People watched and got all hyped up, but in the midst of that the show lost what it originally was supposed to be, I feel. It became all about Ronnie, all about Stacey, all about Archie. Interesting characters all, but not the ensemble the show claims to be. Santar to his credit knew how to get us watching, took risks, and ultimately went out on a high following the Live Episode.

Kirkwood just didn't have a clue. He didn't get the characters and he didn't get the show, shoving it full of "pretty people" and basically making it Hollyoaks 2. His storylines ranged from ridiculous to ludicrous and have done lasting damage that, I think, will be felt for many years to come. He did get some things right, but it's so overshadowed by the bad I'm afraid that's all he can be remembered for.

Lorraine Newman had more of a clue that Kirkwood, but she's been terrible. The show is still stuffed full of pretty, unrelatable teens, and on the rare occasion it's not about them, she's slowly made every other character in the place unlikable. It's just dull, focusing on awful characters and pandering to the lowest common denominator, and I think people have just gotten sick of it. How can we relate to these people when, frankly, the show is just so fricking shallow? Newman was given a poisoned chalice and took a crap in it.

So, in answer, both of them are to blame, following a decade of decline that Santar only paused. It will be very interesting to see what DTC does and how he handles this. I wouldn't expect dramatic changes if I was you, though.

Kirkwood!

That said, Newman should have been braver and undone more of Kirkwood's work.

That's a fairly strong list of storylines, at least in comparison to Lorraine Newman's era.

So far we've had...

Kat shagger (set up by Kirkwood)
The Derek Branning Saga (set up by Kirkwood)
Lauren's drinking (set up by Kirkwood?)
Max/Kirsty/Carl
Zainab's exit
Janine and Michael's fight for Scarlett
Ian's restuarant
Phil and Carl's crash
Ronnie's return

...and I can't really think of much else, and the last two have only been in the past few weeks! Not an impressive list.

Also, the forced U-turn in the baby swap storyline can't have been easy on Kirkwood.

Kirkwood is probably better suited to Hollyoaks than EastEnders

what forced u turn? Kat forgiving her? We got that in the courtroom. Ronnie returning? There were reports that the story was to last 2 years so obviously they never intended on getting rid of womack (she just quit once they did the rush job exit). Making ronnie more sympathetic? She was never the villian in this. So I don't know where the 180 took place.

Worst exit ever......

We've also had another Branning dominated year, which has got tedious beyond belief.

Newman's done very little to excite me, even Eva hasn't been the strong character she first appeared as.

I'd say BK is to blame for the mess that LN has had to clean up. But, I'd also blame the many producers that came before BK, as he also inherited the show in a bad state. At each stage every producer has added to the mess, sweeping many of the ingrained issues under the rug.

LN has been the only one to actively tackle some of these issues: fixing and redeeming certain characters, fixing the offensive sets, creating more of a community vibe, injecting some needed humanity into the characters and stories. However, I think it shows what a huge challenge this was, as certain characters - notably Sharon - have fallen foul of the very things that LN had been trying to undo. Sadly, she chose to continue BK's work early on, and that was probably a mistake that she couldn't get over. She also didn't pick up on certain storyline opportunities (like Lucy's cancer scare) and character interactions.

I also think people have unrealistic expectations of the time it takes to turn an entire soap around. Many people on DS seemed to expect change within 4-6 months, and when that didn't happen, branded LN a hack. What people forget (or don't realise) is that a show can be destroyed just like *that*, but repairs are a lot slower to take effect; viewers are eroded over time, and are even harder to get back.

I think this last week has shown what LN is truly capable of, and a clearer picture of her overall vision for the show. Obviously, she took too long to get here for many, but maybe if people had been more patient...

BK feels like he has added to the damage a lot more than others, b/c he changed so much of the show for no good reason. It always felt like he never truly understood how to write for EE, and instead chose to mould the show into something that he could work with. A decent writer should be able to learn and adapt their craft to suit each show they write for, not clone it into something it wasn't. But to give BK some credit, he did turn Janine around; he truly understood her character, and that showed. Janine was the highlight of his tenure. I loved her story with her dying Nan, and seeing her show her heart. Making Janine rich was genius. But, I also hated him for ruining the Janine/Ryan relationship - that was so unnecessary, IMO.

All these storyline were rushed and not researched, Phil's drug addiction was done and dusted within weeks. Pat was diagnosed with Cancer one episode, in the pub minutes laters on on her deathbed a episode later, they should have done episodes showing how she dealt with the treatment of cancer, telling the family it's terminal, how the family deal with it etc. the vic always was on fire, the guy does not know what Eastenders is about.

It's been in decline since early 2000s so it has been the fault of successive EPs. I think people had high hopes for Newman given her history with the programme and that's why she's getting at the stick

The beginning of Eastenders Fall from grace for me was when they decided to turn Ben into a Murderer and had him bump off Heather Trott along with the unbelievable storyline of him and Lola sleeping together and having a baby and pretty much everything else that has happened to every other character since then. Eastenders lost its way then and never got it back. Lorraine Newman was just the final nail in the coffin. They should have had a mass cull of writers before that and appointed someone who was worthy of the EP position rather than Lorraine. You can bring as many characters back as you like but if the quality writing isn't there for them, theyre not going to shine.

The thing is, the show needs balance, as well as having the big storylines you need the smaller but equally important storylines to go with it. It was ridiculous that some characters would go from one big story to another, but that's been the case for years. It's why Coronation Street is better at keeping it's characters for longer periods as they give them a break between the big juicy storylines by giving the characters smaller plots to get involved in.

Easties has had a problem with this balance for many years now, some characters just hover in the background for donkeys if they are lucky, some just don't appear at all.

I've got to say that Kirkwood is the one to blame, he totally went for big plot after big plot and didn't really focus on characterisation. The only thing I am prepared to give him credit for is Janine, he seemed to get her and put her in a really good place.

Yes he introduced Michael and Lola and while I have always liked Michael, it's only been in recent times that we've been given a chance to see what a great character he is. As for Lola, I really didn't like her under Kirkwood, she was a gobby bitch but Lorraine seems to have made her more rounded.

Lorraine has brought in some great young, talented actors and these characters are still finding their feet but I imagine all of them will have big storylines in 2014.

Did Brian make mistakes. Oh Gawd yes. Is the show in a better position when he left than when he started. No.

Did Lorraine make mistakes. Oh Gawd yes. Is the show in a better position when she left than when she started. Yes.

I still blame both Santer and DTC for killing my Danielle

IMO its from that point that they started ruining Ronnie's character and it started to slide downwards.

can only thing of the odd few storylines that were actual that great.

Stacey's Bi-Poplar
Archie's Murder
Vic Fire

the rest were pretty dire

I think Deschanel is exactly right, in fact she almost echoed what I said on the last page. Yes Newman could have done with a big storyline or two or a marqee episode that people would remember her for or a legendary character that would then be in the show for years to come but sadly that's not what her reign was intended for. She was there to stop the rot and put the show back on track which I think, with the last few weeks as evidence, she has truly done.

It's now up to her successor to make Eastenders unmissable again!

BIB: He! LOL

I didn't intentionally echo your post. I guess we share a similar view.

Newman did well in restoring friendships, building up families, changing some of the god awful sets, fixing certain characters like Kat who is now as close to 2001 as we are ever gonna get and has laid some great foundations and and put some great characters in the show that I am confident will go on to shine, she has left EE in a far better position than Kirkwood and Santer did and that she deserves credit...

However when it came to storylines Newman is probably the worst Exec Producer the show has had, this year Liam's gang storyline and Sharon's pill addiction on paper looked strong, gritty and classic Eastenders storylines,on reality both were piss poor with the gang story only being saved by Pasty Palmer's strong performance but it was very much a watered down version that you would find on the CBBC channel, the gang was not scary and poorly acted and written but lets face it gangs in soaps are all like that and with a timeslot of 7.30 we can't expect much else, Tamwar's battering was laughable, a few years ago a scene like that would have had more violence, some racist language but a quick punch in the ribs and its all over, the fact most of the 'drama' took place away from the square didn't help either, Liam's stabbing was badly done in terms of the way it was filmed, the conclusion was the worst part, it started good with Kane putting pressure on the family to stop Liam from giving evidence yet we saw no court case, no scene of Liam who I think is a good little actor giving his evidence, instead just a throwaway comment and Liam leaving Walford to the sound of Little Mix, I mean seriously WTF.

Then we have Sharon's pill addiction, everything was bad about this...the research, the writing, the pacing and the acting, this was a perfect comeback story for Sharon, we know she was lost and still depressed about losing Dennis, she latched onto men and with Angie's addiction in the past everything about this storyline screamed YES, this is the perfect and natural storyline for her, but the show just couldn't be bothered from start to finish and now it seems it has been totally dropped, awful

And finally Zainab's exit, the worst exit I have seen for a character in years, whilst only 2 months earlier we saw EE put everything into Derek Branning, who was just terrible and one of the worst EE characters in years, it seemed like Zainab's exit was planned in about 10 minutes over the EE storylining lunch break and was a major injustice and kick in the teeth for a character that was well loved and popular with millions of viewers.

I do apologise, DS ought to put gender symbols on the mini profiles to avoid such confusion.

And yes, I think we do!

Yes a lot of people on here used to think I was female.

I blame these people for the state of the show:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s2...-bbc-show.html

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s2...dog-death.html

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s2...it-record.html

I have a feeling producers don't go down the dark, gritty road anymore out of fear of offending the PC brigade. And it wouldn't surprise me if these people are now complaining about how boring the show is.

I hate people who complain, its really simple, if you don't like it, don't watch,

These people ruin it for the rest of us!
Who are these people? 70 year old virgins?

I think EE should definitely take risks again!

That's the only way I can see the show improving.

They need to be bold. It doesn't have to just be gritty storylines, why not axe some of the big names? Phil would be a start.

The decline happened under Kirkwood. Newman is just a stopgap measure.

Eastenders does seem to be aimed at a younger audience these days. Why do the BBC want to attract younger fans when its killing the show? The BBC have said before ratings aren't important to them. So why not make an adult soap opera again with adult themes?

The live episode was the start of the downfall of the show IMO. Because of the desperation to keep the murderer a secret, any momentum gained by the event was immediately lost because other story lines had to suddenly takeover and they seemed pretty minor in comparison. Kirkwood came in with little to work with and tried something dramatic to give the show momentum but picked the wrong plot completely. The rest, as they say, is history.