TV Sets And The City

By Rob Last edited 232 months ago
TV Sets And The City
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Firstly, may we apologise for the God-awful pun, we're still trying to come up with a suitably witty and catchy title for our new, weekly TV review (any ideas please let us know in the comments section).

Mecca Ibrahim is the author of One Stop Short Of Barking - Uncovering the London Underground and is also a practised TV critic (see her critique of Londonist favourite Jamie Oliver), so she was the obvious choice for the position of Londonist telly commentator.

Here we present her first column, which kicks off with, what else, but Eastenders.

Two weeks in Walford is a very long time

I've just got back from a fortnight's holiday and I arrived back in the UK to find a lot of mysteries in EastEnders. I used to (sadly) tape episodes of my favourite soaps when on holiday and then do mammoth catch up sessions madly trying to watch old episodes before the new ones began - as I didn't have two video recorders and when the soaps were on more than twice a week - it quickly got the stage when I ran out of time, so I gave up and thought, "Surely not that much happens in two weeks, I'll be able to work out what's going on."

This is no longer the case with EastEnders where all seems to have happened in the last few weeks.

Most changes with the Slatternly Slaters, Little Mo Slater/Mitchell is back, with a baby in tow from her rape, Orange Kat Slater has left her husband, Alfie, and her daughter/sister Zoe Slater (apparently, my spies tell me that Little Mo will later succumb to the "charms" of her "ex" brother-in-law" - Alfie Moon and we look forward to much bog eyed eye rolling from Dad, Charlie Slater - will he have two daughters both marrying the same man?  How is that going to affect the seating plans at Xmas?) - and we have a Janine Butcher look-a-like in the shape of Stacey Slater.

This little minx who appeared from nowhere and seems to be Charlie Slater's great niece (that's great niece using the familial term - she's certainly not a great niece) has fit into Enders like a dream. She's loud, brassy, likes some bling, seduces the Square's hapless heartthrob Spencer Moon (Alfie's younger brother - I wish you'd all keep up) and is now blackmailing him as she's only 15. "I'm jailbait" she screeches, "an I'll av what jewelry I want from you".  Ahhh, young love on the Square.

And Den Watts is back on the Square. Leslie Grantham, the actor who plays him, leads a charmed life and can do no wrong. In fact the more wrong he does in real life, the more the public seem to love him. What other murdering, philandering, web sex camming, rest of cast slagging, actor can swagger in and out of one the UK's most popular TV shows, like the rest of the world owes him a favour?

Reality used to be a friend of mine.

At the time of writing I'm looking forward to Posh Swap (Friday 10pm Channel Five) - we take one posh bloke (Princess Di's ex James Hewitt) and turn him into a working class oik and take a cockney sparrow (Birds of a Feather's Linda Robson) and turn her into a Lady. Closely followed by When Jordan Met Peter (11pm - ITV1) - which charts the Hello-loving relationship between the glamour model and the Antipodean crooner Andre.  

I can hardly wait.

Last Updated 15 November 2004