1980s broadcast history
Press coverage of EastEnders, which was already intense, went into overdrive once the show was broadcast. With public interest so high, the media began investigating the private lives of the show's popular stars. Within days, the scandalous headline the producers had all dreaded appeared — "EASTENDERS STAR IS A KILLER". This referred to Leslie Grantham, and his prison sentence for the murder of a taxi driver in an attempted robbery nearly 20 years earlier. This shocking tell-all style set the tone for relations between Albert Square and the press for the next 20 years.
The show's first episode attracted some 17 million viewers, and it continued to attract high viewing figures from then on.
By Christmas 1985, the tabloids couldn't get enough of the show. 'Exclusives' about EastEnders storylines and the actors on the show became a staple of tabloid buyers daily reading.
From its early days, EastEnders featured "gritty" storylines involving drugs and crime, representing the issues faced by working-class Britain. High profile early storylines cot death , homophobia, racism and murder , unemployment reflecting the mass unemployment of that era, rape and teenage pregnancy.The show also dealt with prostitution mixed-race relationships, shoplifting, sexism, divorce, domestic violence and mugging.
Mary Whitehouse argued at the time that EastEnders represented a violation of "family viewing time" and that it undermined the watershed policy. She regarded EastEnders as a fundamental assault on the family and morality itself. She made reference to representation of family life and emphasis on psychological and emotional violence within the show. She was also critical of language such as "bleeding", "bloody hell", "bastard" and "for Christ's sake". Language presented in eastenders shows the change over the decades on what language is now accepted in society today.
In addition on 19 February 2010. The episode was commissioned as part of the show's 25th anniversary celebrations and was the first EastEnders episode to be broadcast live. This brought in a lot of media attention and crtitic reviews . And since then they have continued to do live epsiodes on singificant plotlines in a year.
