Begorra meets gorblimey

EastEnders rocks up in Ireland

Lucy Lethbridge
Redwater
BBC1

Soap operas, despite their high-octane dramatic interventions, depend for their success on familiarity, on the slow accretion of character over a length of time. The longer viewers have to get to know a character the more they can stomach any implausibility thrown at them. And there must, of course, be lots of trouble.

In EastEnders, the BBC’s longest-running television soap, the inhabitants of Albert Square have plagues rained on them like Job but stoically respond to every new indignity with the incantations “leave it aht” or “shut it”; and sometimes they kill each other, or sleep with a close relative’s spouse, or just go to the pub to make a scene.