EastEnders is a long-running, popular and award-winning television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985. It currently ranks as one of the most watched shows in the United Kingdom. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End of London. The series primarily centres around the residents of Albert Square, a Victorian square of terraced houses, and its neighbouring streets, namely Bridge Street, Turpin Road and George Street, and which encompasses a pub, street market, night club, community centre, cafe and various small businesses, in addition to a park and allotments.

It is one of the UK's highest-rated programmes, often appearing near or at the top of the week's BARB ratings. Within eight months of its launch, it reached the number one spot in the ratings, and has remained, almost consistently, among the top-rated TV programmes in Britain ever since.Created by producer Julia Smith and script editor Tony Holland, EastEnders has remained a significant programme in terms of the BBC's success and audience share, and also in the history of British television drama, tackling many controversial and taboo issues previously unseen on mainstream television in the UK.

EastEnders programme makers took the decision that the show was to be about "everyday life" in the inner city "today" and regarded it as a "slice of life". Creator/producer Julia Smith declared that "We don't make life, we reflect it". She also said, "We decided to go for a realistic, fairly outspoken type of drama which could encompass stories about homosexuality, rape, unemployment and racial prejudice etc., in a believable context. Above all, we wanted realism".

In the 1980s, EastEnders featured "gritty" storylines involving drugs and crime, representing the issues faced by working-class Britain.Storylines included the cot death of 14-month-old Hassan Osman, Nick Cotton's homophobia, racism and murder of Reg Cox, Arthur Fowler's unemployment reflecting the recession of the 1980s, the rape of Kathy Beale in 1988 by James Willmott-Brown and Michelle Fowlers's teenages pregnancy. The show also dealt with prostitution, mixed-race relationships, shoplifting, sexism, divorce, domestic violence and mugging. The stories have continued to be centred around therse sorts of themes right up to the present day, and the current story writers are still thinking of many new stories to portray real life to the audience.

The idea for a new soap opera on BBC1 was conceived in 1983, by BBC executives, principally David Reid, the then Head of Series & serials, who was keen for the BBC to produce a new evening soap opera. They gave the job of creating this new soap to script writer Tony Holland and producer Julia Smith, famous for their work together on Z Cars. They created twenty-four original characters for the show, based upon Holland's own family, and people they remembered from their own experiences in the East End.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EastEnders