Would you Adam and Eve it?

The timing could hardly be worse. EastEnders celebrates its 20th birthday at a time when the very future of the soap is being called into question. Each week brings a fresh crisis - a resignation, a scandal involving the actors or a new ratings low.

Anniversaries become, inevitably, a time to look back over the past and recall the highs. This is hardly an appropriate time to be reminded of the good old days as that emphasises how bad things are now in Albert Square.

A jolly cockney knees up in the Queen Vic on February 19 - the day in 1985 the first edition was broadcast on BBC1 - is the last thing that the production team will want to mark the two decades. They'll be too busy at crisis meetings, seeking ways to restore confidence in the Walford saga.

Some will say that EastEnders is just going through a bad patch as part of the highs and lows every drama series experiences. Adam Woodyatt, who plays Ian Beale and is one of only two actors who've been with the soap since the start, thinks as much. "The same thing happened in 1989," he says. "I wouldn't worry about it. Four years ago everybody was having a pop at the Street. It's just our turn at the moment."

Fighting talk and I'd have agreed until recently. But EastEnders is taking an awful long time pulling itself out of the doldrums, seemingly more concerned with Walford's gangster fraternity than the lives of the residents. It doesn't have any character or any storyline to make it unmissable viewing.

Several recent episodes have recorded the soap's lowest-ever ratings, which have dipped alarmingly when ITV1 scheduled hour-long episodes of Emmerdale against EastEnders.

The departure of cast members, either willingly or unwillingly, has left the show depleted of characters we know and love. The resurrection of Dirty Den, which looked a good idea at the time, soon soured after actor Leslie Grantham's unsavoury Internet activities were exposed. Having a soap villain who's the subject of jokes and ridicule just won't work, so he's being written out.

New families, notably the Ferreiras, have failed to find favour with viewers. Absences caused by pregnant actresses or those suspended for bad behaviour haven't helped the writers. No wonder the rumour started that production was being suspended for several weeks due to insufficient plots.

EastEnders is fortunate that former producer John Yorke has returned to the BBC - as Controller Continuing Drama Series - and taken charge. This follows the departure after just four months of producer Kathleen Hutchison, who'd been drafted in to shake things up. Yorke has already recruited "show heavyweights" from the past, like writer Tony Jordan, in a bid to beef up the scripts.

Then there are rumours that past stars are being enticed back to boost ratings. Ross Kemp's Grant Mitchell is the hot favourite to return.

Only time will tell if EastEnders can find its feet again and prove a worthy rival to Coronation Street, which has rubbed salt into the BBC soap's wounds by winning a string of prizes of late.

We should remember that EastEnders has given the BBC the soap the corporation never had. Over at Broadcasting Centre, they'd always been a bit sniffy about the soap genre, believing it was something more at home on the commercial channel. Twenty years ago, BBC1 boss Michael Grade decided otherwise. He needed an early evening anchor programme that would attract large ratings and, hopefully, entice viewers to continue watching the channel for the rest of the evening.

Twice-weekly EastEnders was born. East 8, Round the Square, Round Houses and London Pride were all rejected as titles for the series created by Julia Smith and Tony Holland, who previously worked together on nursing series Angels and District Nurse.

In EastEnders' first scene, pub landlord Den Watts broke into pensioner Reg Cox's flat and found him slumped dead in his armchair. "Stinks in here," he said. The feeling was echoed by clean-up TV campaigner Mary Whitehouse who warned: "It is at our peril that we allow this series. Its verbal aggression and its atmosphere of physical violence, its homosexuality, its blackmailing pimp and its prostitute, its lies and deceit and its bad language, cannot go unchallenged."

Her opposition did a good job of selling it to a public increasingly hooked on soap of all shapes, sizes and quality. After a shaky start, EastEnders became part of British life while other soaps, including Albion Market and El Dorado, came and went. Or, in the case of Crossroads, came and went and then came back again and went again.

But soaps aren't indestructible. Brookside showed that. The end of the Scouse soap was unthinkable, but it happened all the same.

EastEnders gave BBC the consistent ratings it needed, which is why they gave us more and more of it - now four times a week and a Sunday omnibus. The increasingly packed schedule, which leaves no time for actors to rehearse, hasn't affected the quality but has placed unbearable demands on storyliners struggling to find more and more plots to fill the extra episodes.

The soap can also pride itself on creating a new generation of TV stars, many of whom have gone on to bigger and occasionally better things. Back in 1985, the cast were all unknowns bar one - Are You Being Served? star Wendy Richard, whose Pauline Fowler is still there today.

The show has given the likes of Anita Dobson, Michelle Collins, Ross Kemp, Martin Kemp, Tamsin Outhwaite, Patsy Palmer, Martine McCutcheon and Simon Berry a high profile that helped them get work outside the Square.

Walford has also provided a refuge for performers looking for fresh challenges, like entertainer Shane Ritchie, or a safe haven after years in the business, like Barbara Windsor.

EastEnders works as TV drama although Adam Woodyatt, who grew up in the East End, doesn't think the soap is very like the real East End. "If it actually portrayed the East End as it really was, it would have to go out a lot later at night. The language and the life is far more colourful. A lot of the time I would say it's a sanitised version of the East End."

He's also adamant that EastEnders isn't finished yet. "I can't see any reason why it can't go on for another 20 years," he says. "I know I'm still happy going to work. Believe me, we have a lot of laughs down there. And there's still plenty of stories to be told down there."

Published: 05/02/2005