I do wonder with that piss poor Who's Shagging Kat story.

To be fair though, imagine it from his point of view.

He's promoted to EP of the BBC's biggest show, he's riding high from the kudos he got from Hollyoaks, his team has a very bold potentially iconic storyline involving 2 of the biggest characters in the show one of whom played a blinder in EE's best story this century.

He creates a new family around her with a well known star, the future looks bright. Then it all goes horribly wrong. There's a public backlash, the story has to be cut short, one of the central characters quits, Mr pop star and his sons turn out to be dreadful actors, and Mr pop star quits after 6 months. He gets little backing from his bosses who are concentrating on the Voice. His dream job has turned to shit and he is very publicly exposed.

On a human level, anyone is going to find it difficult to give their best work in that scenario.

And sadly Lorraine Newman repeated the same process. As much as we pillory them I do have some sympathy for them.

I think he set out to sabotage it from day 1. He'd trashed Kat's original arc within a matter of episodes. When was it that the joint Santer and Kirkwood episodes ended?

Why?Im not disagreeing with you but did Kirkwood have an exceptionally malicious personality or an ulterior motive?

Kirkwood killed off Pat, he can't be forgiven.

He wont be not by me

LN ruined sharon? But BK would have anyway haha

From what I read on here her return and incubation as a Branning cohort were BK's storylines that LN let play out. She came in during the producer overlap which was the worst possible time to return.

Look at it this way, for the first half of 2011, I didn't notice anything wrong at all with a EastEnders, the exits of babs, and lacey did stand out though, there was clearly something missing! But I do think his first year he did a great job! It's 2012 that he thoroughly messed up! 2011 was the year he started to destroy it, but up until ronnies exit, the show was still in good hands tbf, I still loved the show, now I do love the show again but it's hard to praise some of dtc's work ATM, the quality of episodes isn't fantastic either! Kirkwoods episodes 2010-2011 had decent quality, watch clips from January 2011 and you will see that:P him and LN both made different types of messes, kirkwood destroyed the characters and families, and introduced some shit families/characters, and LN focused way too much on 'love and warmth' she was boring AF and didn't take any risks, her episodes were DRY! And her summer was woeful, nothing major happened during her time on the show, whereas during kirkwoods time A LOT of major stuff took place! Queen vic fire, staceys exit, baby swap, pats death were all done by him and got the people speaking about EastEnders (good or bad) all LN did was rebuild characters and family so that dtc would have an easier job when he started, you could say LN and BK were both as bad as one another, but if we HAD to have one back it would be kirkwood as I enjoyed his period a lot more than newmans, a lot of people seem to say she's the worst producer she's ever had, so idk why so many people are sticking up for her on here, she was woeful! (Kirkwood is no angel, I know!)

Kirkwood, because his very bold storylines (which unfortunately were very badly received) led to a period when everyone was too scared to do anything. To me, LN's tenure reflects the BBC post-Savile & Sachsgate - timid, strapped for cash, and desperate not to offend.

Add a pole!

Kirkwood damaged the very fabric of the show. Whilst there were some good moments, it was followed by an awful, awful amount of crap. He tried to apply the success formula of Hollyoaks to EastEnders whilst not realising the two shows were totally different. He replaced good writers with bad ones. Without good writers, the show is going to suffer no matter how good storylines or characters are perceived to be.

Lorraine Newman stabilised the show. Rebuilt a lot of the damage that Kirkwood imposed. Her only issue was nothing else was going on with the show whilst she was doing this, making it very boring and lacklustre.

Pleased to see a lot of support for Newman. I used to think I was a lone voice in pointing out what she did. You need to remember she had been with EE since the 90s so really the only person who could stabilised the show was her, as she was the only one with the experience to do so. An outsider would have made it ten times worse.

I don't know if I will play into the theories that Kirkwood ruined EE on purpose but I think some of his decisions were made to annoy sections of fans that had been overly critical of his work, I don't think the guy can handle criticism, plus I do think someone, somewhere was badly advising him. So perhaps it wasn't all his own fault. EastEnders is not Corrie or Hollyoaks. He made the mistake of not realising this.

I wouldn't call the baby swap a bold storyline. No one would ever swap their newly dead discovered for their neighbours. It was offensive to anyone who lost a child. However I don't think Kirkwood can take all the blame. Those higher above him should have seen the reaction coming before it did. There are suppose to be people in place to watch out for that sort of thing so why didn't they?

In a way they did. In December they held a press screening of the episodes which saw the storyline met with shock and horror from the press. Objections were already starting within the media and as a result the BBC cut dozens of scenes from the New Years Day episodes but it was too late. You can't stop a train crash if the train has already derailed.

I agree. I don't believe Kirkwood intentionally sabotaged EastEnders; after all the man has his own career and reputation as a serious drama producer to think about. But I agree that certain decisions he made (ie killing off Pat) were massive "eff you" gestures to fans who were critical of his work.

He didn't listen to, or care, what the audience said at all. For months on end we had the Moon brothers, Derek and Ben dominating the storylines, even though these characters were all incredibly unpopular. It is literally like he did it to piss everybody off. "These are MY characters, this is MY show - if you don't like it you're wrong".