From Phil Mitchell's time-travelling murder to audience-dictated love: EastEnders Live capped a wild 40th

The Guardian

20-02-2025

The 40th anniversary of EastEnders couldn't have come at a better time. Ratings are in freefall; once the most watched thing on TV, these days the soap is lucky if it cracks the top 20. But an anniversary like this gives EastEnders an opportunity to not only celebrate itself, but to reaffirm its own mission statement. And it has gone about this by going on an absolute tear.
With little else to lose, EastEnders has spent the last few weeks wildly swinging for the fences. Don't mistake this for hyperbole, either. Just look at last Thursday's episode where – and I promise I'm not making any of this up – Phil Mitchell embarked on a long monologue about all the different things he's survived (alcoholism, drug addiction, illness, heart attacks, an actual shooting), then travelled back in time and murdered a younger version of himself, before the ghost of his dead mother arrived and urged him to kill himself. It was utterly bizarre, but it was also incredible. Had a big budget streaming show attempted something this daring, it would be lauded to the heavens. But this is old workday EastEnders, and so the whole thing passed without comment.
Still, this impeccable form meant that EastEnders went into Thursday full of confidence. And it needed it, because this was the big anniversary live episode. In the past, live episodes of EastEnders have been marked by a pleasing shonkiness, with actors forgetting lines, or visibly twitching when they're supposed to be dead, or calling Ian Beale by his actor's name and then looking more terrified than any human in all of history. Still, even by previous standards, this episode had an awful lot of ground to cover.
The Vic had been destroyed (again), trapping a number of characters, one of whom was in labour. But also to clear up was the aftermath of a six-week whodunnit about Cindy Beale's attempted murder to deal with (she had already died once before; but forget it: it's Walford). Plus, there was the continuing saga of Phil Mitchell's efforts to kill himself and a brand new Bandersnatchesque twist where viewers got to decide which hunk Denise Fox should end up with. All said, it was shaping up to be spectacular.
But then came the reality. There was no Cindy in the live episode and, aside from one very brief shot at the end, no Phil either. Anyone expecting any more time-travelling homicides will have come away bitterly disappointed. The Denise storyline was something of a damp squib, too. After a weirdly breezy pep talk from Linda Carter (who was somehow able to brush off the fact that the pub she used to work in had just exploded, at the exact same time that she watched Phil Mitchell attempt to shoot himself in the head), she knocked on the door of the hunk she had the least sexual chemistry with, and that was that.
Sonia's birth was also dealt with in a strangely businesslike manner, save for the fact that she named her baby Julia, after the show's co-creator Julia Smith. Instead, the bulk of the episode was devoted to a number of romantic exchanges between Martin Fowler (trapped under a girder) and Stacey Slater (much less trapped under a girder). The reason for this quickly became apparent; a paramedic stated that Martin would probably die once the girder was lifted. Spoiler – he did.
It was all very sad but, for those of you keeping score, live EastEnders episodes are now officially a very bad time to be Stacey Slater's romantic interest. Her boyfriend Bradley Branning died on the 25th anniversary, and now Martin's gone too. Just as a piece of practical advice, whoever ends up with Stacey next should probably give serious consideration to booking a nice long holiday for the duration of February 2035. Better to be safe than sorry, after all.
Storylines aside, though, the main takeaway of the episode was how extraordinarily proficient it all was. The performances and execution were flawless. Not a single thing went wrong. It is the first time that EastEnders has properly nailed a live episode. So while it might not have been particularly memorable, from a technical standpoint this was a clear demonstration that EastEnders knows exactly what it's doing.
The hope must have been that this experiment would put more eyeballs on EastEnders. Regardless of what happened in the episode itself, you'd have to hope that it works. It might no longer be the ratings behemoth it once was, but this was proof that EastEnders still has an awful lot to be proud of.
EastEnders Live aired on BBC One and is available on iPlayer.