An EP who not only takes most of the less antagonistic decisions like axing the low hanging fruit eg Poppy,AJ etc but whos prepared to axe either popular characters or actors who are popular with the cast or viewers but who have reached the end of the road/better axed but it would take courage and balls to do it as youd be taking on strong vested interests.
What would a radical OP do storyline wise ,which couple in a comfy but ultimately stagnant rut would they break up,who would they put together?

What kind of daring storylines would they do without being cowed by a press or social media backlash?

When I say radical I dont mean stupid.Killing off Pat was imo stupid not radical.

You've touched on it in your opening post but one man's radical is another man's stupid.

Radical - Have a popular character (who has undergone a lot of heartache) lose a child and then snatch another one and pretend that is your baby.

Have a very popular character killed off because the actress wanted time off
Bring back a very popular legacy character advertise her return as a hurricane and then do jack all with her

Bring back two characters that had a lovely send off and embroil them in the baby swap plot

Now we all know that these were stupid.

I'd say Kirkwood was pretty radical. His ideas might have been crap but he had the conviction to put his stamp on Eastenders. His production style was distinctive to say the least. Compare that to bland and pedestrian Lorraine Newman.

True but Id hate OPs to lose their bottle because other EPs dared and failed due to calling it badly incompetently wrong.The price of wanting an EP to be brave is that they will sometimes get it wrong.My personal feeling was Pat being killed off had a tinge of EP malice behind it and that being brave and radical didnt really come into it as much but thats just my view.

A properly radical EP would make no announcements for at least two weeks and study the form of the show, its actors and planned story lines

Include gritty storylines like anorexia (Abi), HIV/AIDS (Max?), child death (Tiffany?), male rape (??), racist bullying (Tamwar), transexuality. Kill off someone like Alfie Moon who was once loved by viewers but has fast become stale and tedious. Put Denise and Fatboy together and make Denise pregnant.

That would certainly be radical.

Radical would be axing favourites or classic characters like : Kat & alfie, Phil, Dot, Ian.

Radical would be something controversial like a Muslim extremeist story for the Masoods (which would be insensitive & possibly culturally offensive). But it would be radical.

A happy marriage that lasted- both radical & impossible in EE.

A pedophile in the show (Id feel pity for whichever actor got lumbered with THAT role)

A character who made racist remarks about say, Aleks. EE lives in a very PC world, on the streets of Britain people are not so polite. Esp behind closed doors.

A under-aged teen (say Cindy) getting romantically involved with a person much older than themselves (and not played from an "abuse" angle)

It would be much easier for an Emmerdale EP to be radical. They could just kill off a perfectly good sheep or something, like a nutter.

Killing off Lucy Beale was pretty radical, as was installing a brand new family at the Vic and withholding huge storyline twists from the press.

Kill off the cesspool of Philth or actually have him lose a fight or a feud to a bloke for once.

http://www.holland.com/upload_mm/5/3...ig_560x350.jpg

Agree about The Vic but not sure about killing Lucy being radical?I think it was more drastic remedy to a poor casting decision of Bryan Kirkwoods.

Killing off Lucy Beale, cancer storyline for Carol Jackson, bringing in the Carters - with a big Carter storyline, return of Sharon Watts (I mean, Watts not Rickman), bringing back Nick Cotton, ensuring that the Lucy Beale storyline effects almost every single character on the show. DTC is the most radical EP in years. Certainly as radical as Diederick Santer - who I'd like to come back too.

In what way was Carols cancer storyline radical?Theyve done cancer stories before with Tanya,Dot,Pat and one of Sharons husbands died from brain cancer.MS,ME,bowel disease,some form of muscle wasting disease,a character going deaf ?They would have been radical as theyd have been a departure from an illness thats been done before.Carols has been done better than the others but that in itself doesnt make it radical.Also didnt Ethel die from cancer?
Bringing back Sharon Watts is good and desirable but its really only a correction of the characters poor characterisation upon return.Thats not brave or radical thats putting right a longstanding wrong.
Im also not convinced that Lucys murder is having a major ripple effect where its effecting every other character in a noteworthy way.
Bringing in a new family to The Vic at longlast and booting out the moons now that I agree was very radical and much needed.

I'm sorry but the previous cancer storylines involving Tanya, Dot and Pat were very poor. Sharon's fiance, Tom, didn't die of brain cancer. He was dying so they agreed to marry but he attempted to rescue Trevor Morgan in a fire but died with Trevor in the fire. They could have done another illness, you're right, but Carol's cancer storyline was a very good and much needed one which included a masectonomy which is a quite controversial. Lucy's murder is having a major ripple effect - it's affected the Brannings, the Mitchells, the Carters, the Cokers, the Masoods, the Butchers, major characters who have been unrelated to Lucy have had been affected (for eg. Cora Cross or Linda Carter), it's quite big. I agree re. Sharon and the Carters.

Great post sw.

Let's face it. Soaps have a wide audience and almost every aspect of them is loved by someone and hated by another. They haven't changed much over the years. If you look back at "vintage" episodes from years ago, you can be pretty sure that people still made the same remarks as they do now. Today's characters will also be viewed as "legends" in 30 years time no matter how poor they are because that is what nostalgia does. Pointless doing anything radical. Soaps serve up a certain diet and always will do. They are cheap entertainment.

I definitely agree with that statement. People, including myself, have a habit on looking back on past episodes with rose-tinted glasses. For example, the 2004-2006 era of EastEnders was ridiculed and slaughtered by fans and critics due to the questionable quality of the show back then. Now it seems to be referred back too as some sort of golden era of the show.

I will give it five/six years until the Kirkwood era is fondly remembered by fans on here when the quality once again takes a nosedive .

Matthew Robinson was radical. He killed of Tiffany and Cindy as well as axing almost 40 characters and brought in the likes of Mel, Lisa, Steve, Dan, Jamie and got Frank, Janine, Natalie, Dot and Jim all back as full time characters. Matthew being trained by Julia Smith is why he knew what needed to be done.

DTC is not as good as Santer maybe because Santer had alot more experience but he is better than Kirkwood and Newman although Newman deserves credit for her major, and overlooked part, in restoring the show after the mess Kirkwood left it in.

2003/2004 is but 2005 has always been regarded as one of the best years of the show and any fan will say that. Its no coincidence that EastEnders won every major award, including the BAFTA and RTS, in 2006 as a result of the huge success 2005 was.

As has been said already there's a difference between radical and stupid. It's a fine line that Robinson sometimes got right and sometimes got wrong. DTC seems unwilling to let go of any of his own creations even though many of them have now become pointless such as Whitney and her recycled relationship dramas, Fatboy (!) and the Masoods. Certainly the axe should have been swung at more than just Newman's creations when he took over. As for the storylines, we were promised new songs to sing but there's been nothing but standard soap fare. EastEnders is still a warm bath and not a dangeous beast or however he described it.

Perhaps the problem is EastEnders can't afford to be radical anymore. When you're left with Ian Beale as the only option to focus the 30th anniversary around and Shirley Carter as the poster child for a new era clearly someone was a bit too radical in the past.

EastEnders of old is now long gone. Its a sad fact that we now have to deal with. However this change didn't happen in 2006 as many like to suggest. It happened in 2010 - that is when the make up and DNA of EastEnders started to change & not for the better either. By mid 2011 it was a completely different show.

I sometimes wonder if the BBC have so much red tape around EastEnders the producers are unable to be as free as they would like. There are still moments when EastEnders is amazing but they are so few and far between thesedays. I also have to agree with Broken Arrow. Don't get me wrong I like Shirley but making her the heart of the show at The Vic was a big mistake. The Carter's themselves are just too large now and I think once you strip everything away they aren't as good as perhaps we would like to think. I mean all their storylines so far have been pretty undistinguished. Have we been seduced by hype to hide the cracks I wonder?? without Danny Dyer this family would be nothing. That's a major problem.

If Julia Smith was alive today I bet she would demand her name isn't on the credits because EastEnders is no longer the show she created it to be.

Great post. EastEnders still feels glossy and unrealistic even though we were promised a return to form. Don't get me wrong, I won't be giving up watching it (unless the Brannings start dominating again) but it is nowhere near the quality it used to be.

I do think spin and hype have been used to hide the cracks. The Carters are okay but the constant focus on them has become boring. If they were so interesting that wouldn't be the case. Similarly, all the storylines DTC has hyped up have been disappointing. I think Sharon Vs. Phil will even end up a damp squib. It has hardly featured for weeks anyway.

Interesting point about 2010 being the point EastEnders changed for good. I always said 2006 but I think that's because of the loss of so many classic characters around that time. Looking back there were still gritty storylines like Denise's domestic abuse, Stella abusing Ben and Jay's dad being beaten to death. I'd probably say the baby swap is the turning point. They've played it very safe since then.

Isn't this Paul Marquess all over

Thank you both for your high quality thoughtful posts.

I think in a nutshell for a combination of reasons the benchmark their using for quality has changed and shifted permanently.With some margin for improvement perhaps now this is as good as it gets and high watermark /peak/zenith quality wise is more or less ovee.Its still watchable and more so this year than in recent times but what the BBC or EastEnders team class as high quality is different from 10 years ago and only an unlikely miracle will change that.

i would love mick to knock the red tomato silly.