I found an archived article from the Guardian, printed on Wednesday 20th February, 1985. I thought, as many of us are celebrating EastEnders 21st Anniversary, I'd give extracts from the article. 
Episode one began with a boot smashing through a wooden door, and ended with a fist shattering a glass one.
And so we begin.
In Albert Square, London E20, it's safer and cheaper to leave your door open, which is maybe how the East End got its legendary reputation for chumminess. "In the old days," as Ethel says, "We may 'ave 'ad fleas, but we knew our neighbours."
These days, it seems, old Reg can sink out of ken for several days before anyone notices.
Den and Arthur kick in Reg's door and find him slumped with what they take to be a touch of the old dodgy strawberry; a dash for the doctor, and GP and ambulance beat even Ethel and Louise to the scene of the crisis.
Which is going some in Albert Square, Lou being a kind of Ena Sharples with snakes under the hairnet. "I'm the only bugger that cares!" she roars, and everyone takes cover.
EastEnders has all the standard ingredients of a successful soap opera, a pub, shops, a dynastic family, and quarrels 10 hours a day.
So it's pretty much as expected, Coronation Street with added abrasives and a Cockney accent and at that level it's a good professional stab at the task; and it looks a lot more realistic than Granada's apparently endless saga, which has got soft and sluggish lately.
It will probably take a year before anyone knows whether the BBC has got it right. If they have, by then the people you feel you couldn't bear to live with right now may have become the people you can't live without, Tuesday and Thursday nights, on into the next century.
And it did. Nice bit of nostalgia for us all there. Happy Birthday EastEnders.
Episode one began with a boot smashing through a wooden door, and ended with a fist shattering a glass one.
And so we begin.
In Albert Square, London E20, it's safer and cheaper to leave your door open, which is maybe how the East End got its legendary reputation for chumminess. "In the old days," as Ethel says, "We may 'ave 'ad fleas, but we knew our neighbours."
These days, it seems, old Reg can sink out of ken for several days before anyone notices.
Den and Arthur kick in Reg's door and find him slumped with what they take to be a touch of the old dodgy strawberry; a dash for the doctor, and GP and ambulance beat even Ethel and Louise to the scene of the crisis.
Which is going some in Albert Square, Lou being a kind of Ena Sharples with snakes under the hairnet. "I'm the only bugger that cares!" she roars, and everyone takes cover.
EastEnders has all the standard ingredients of a successful soap opera, a pub, shops, a dynastic family, and quarrels 10 hours a day.
So it's pretty much as expected, Coronation Street with added abrasives and a Cockney accent and at that level it's a good professional stab at the task; and it looks a lot more realistic than Granada's apparently endless saga, which has got soft and sluggish lately.
It will probably take a year before anyone knows whether the BBC has got it right. If they have, by then the people you feel you couldn't bear to live with right now may have become the people you can't live without, Tuesday and Thursday nights, on into the next century.
And it did.
Nice bit of nostalgia for us all there. Happy Birthday EastEnders.
