The good, the bad and the ugly: celebrating 40 years of high drama in Albert Square

‘EastEnders’ may not be at its peak but every moment, from ridiculous reveals to social commentary, has played a part in four decades of cockney-fuelled fun,

- Fiona Sturges

When EastEnders launched on BBC One in 1985, Britain’s most popular soap operas were being imported from America. Dynasty and Dallas both peddled televised fantasies of extreme wealth, atrocious behaviour and shoulder pads you could land a helicopter on. Then, on a gloomy February evening, came EastEnders, a soap set in working-class London, which began with three men – a cabbie, a publican and an out-of-work gardener – breaking down the door of a dank bedsit where a man lay dead in an armchair. This homegrown series was billed as a cockney Coronation Street but the vibe was positively Dickensian.

Now Dallas and Dynasty are a distant memory (failed reboots notwithstanding) but EastEnders, which this week celebrates its 40th anniversary, lives on. It may no longer pull the audiences of its heyday – 30.1 million tuned in to watch Dirty Den serve his wife divorce papers on Christmas Day 1986 – but it remains an institution, as reliable in the TV schedules as the News at Six.

When that first episode premiered, 13 million viewers were introduced to characters that became more familiar than their own neighbours. There was chain-smoking Bible-botherer Dot Cotton, and her delinquent son, Nick; Den, the pub landlord, and his gin-swilling wife, Angie; cardi-clad Pauline, whose pregnancy in her forties caused her battleaxe mother, Lou, to blow a gasket; Pauline’s brother, Pete, the fruit-and-veg seller who called female customers “treacle”; Ali, the Turkish-Cypriot taxi driver with a gambling habit. The soap had pets too: Roly the poodle, witness to all manner of grubby goings-on in the Queen Victoria pub, and Ethel’s pug Willy, EastEnders’ answer to Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy. Later came Wellard, a Belgian Shepherd with 10 times the charisma of his owner, Robbie, and Lady Di, cherished mutt of the Carter family.