Television
Over-
Wendy Cope
0 ne evening in June I was having supper with the organiser of a poetry reading and the conversation turned to television. I mentioned that I had watched EastEnders for ten minutes or so on a couple of occasions but hadn't felt tempted to watch any more. 'Oh,' she said. 'You have to like EastEnders to have cred.'
` "Cred" as in "street cred"?' I asked. She confirmed that this was, indeed, what she meant and I told her, rather pompously I fear, that I would continue to manage without it. I resolved never to watch EastEnders again, not even for five mi- nutes.
That lasted until Christmas Day when, stupefied with rich pudding and too many chocolates, I sat through a whole episode and thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact I en- joyed it so much that I wanted the second helping on offer at 10 p.m. as well. Having persuaded my relations that it would be a good idea to watch The Importance of Being Earnest on Channel 4, I proposed that we change our plans and stay with BBC1, taking in the Agatha Christie be- tween instalments from Albert Square. So there we sat, like laboratory rats, behaving exactly as the BBC schedulers had pre- dicted. One interesting thing about EastEnders was that I had no difficulty at all in understanding what was going on, even though I had hardly ever watched it. Somehow I had absorbed enough informa- tion about Dirty Den, Angie, Michelle, Lofty and the rest to follow the story. I knew, for example, that Den was the father of Michelle's baby and that he was currently involved with a posh older woman. I hadn't realised that he was only staying with Angie because he mistakenly believed her to be dying but I was just as gripped as anyone else when he chose Christmas Day to announce that he was going to divorce her.
It's probably all over the tabloids by now, though not, of course, the tabloids they read in Albert Square. Someone has commented on the fact that the characters in Dallas never watch soap operas on television. It seems to me that there is quite a serious problem in this area for the scriptwriters of EastEnders. What would characters like theirs really do on Christ- mas Day? The answer, I think, is that they would gather round their television sets and watch EastEnders. Some of the men would want to watch the James Bond film on ITV and this would lead to rows. In the episodes I watched no one looked at a newspaper or switched on a television set. At one point they put on paper hats, formed themselves, into a line, and went singing and dancing in the street. Does this still happen in the East End at Christmas time? Perhaps it is a question that only a credless person would need to ask.
I am very much afraid that I shall feel the need to watch EastEnders again next Tues- day and Thursday. The risk of addiction is an occupational hazard that I am prepared to accept. What I feel bad about is expos- ing my mother to it. I am fairly sure that the programme has gained at least one new viewer in the home counties.
A new series of Miss Marple mysteries begins in the New Year and I hope I shall have the self-discipline not to watch all of those as well. Murder at the Vicarage on Christmas Day was quite delicious. Joan Hickson is exactly right as Miss Marple much closer to my idea of the character than Margaret Rutherford was. Everything else -- the clothes, the setting, the casting — seemed exactly right too. The fact that I had read the book made no difference because Agatha Christie melts in the mind like brandy butter and I can never remem- ber who is going to be killed or whodunnit.
To round off the seasonal over- indulgence, I stayed up until after midnight watching Educating Rita (also on BBC1. By 10.40 p.m. there was no question of doing anything as dynamic as changing channels.) I liked the film but I felt absolutely ghastly by the end of it. This week I am on low-calorie meals, mineral water and strictly selective viewing. And I am jogging round the block after every programme.
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