EastEnders and the environment: Communicating the planetary crisis in prime time?

Abstract

The BBC flagship continuing drama EastEnders (1985-) is widely accepted as an exemplar of the ‘entertainment-education’ approach, embodying a strong public service ideology and rooted in Reithian values. In this paper, I explore the definitional role of the programme in addressing environmental issues in the digital age and argue that this is a novel opportunity to examine the limits and possibilities of the genre to engage with anthropogenic crises. My analysis is informed by the perspectives of EastEnders scriptwriters/consultants and sustainability professionals who perceived prime time drama as providing a unique tool to engage distinctive diverse audiences who are marginalised by blue-chip nature series. For the first time, I address the context in which popular environmental storylines are produced in the UK and identify how storytelling is mediated by the contemporary hostile television environment with intense competition from streaming channels and social media platforms. I outline how the dynamics of environmental storytelling are shaped explicitly by external factors including organisational commitment to climate content and the perceived role of the BBC in catalysing a ‘national conversation’. Powerful tacit assumptions concerning ‘good stories’ being rooted in interpersonal friction potentially risk presenting a false equivalency – given that environmental scientists are reluctant to collaborate with this ‘low status’ media product. Continuing drama facilitates distinct opportunities to connect climate crisis to the lived experience through human-centred narratives but the contemporary television production context is in a state of flux and dated assumptions concerning its role in constructing public attitudes and beliefs need to be revisited.

On 12 October 2022, the BBC One flagship prime time continuing drama EastEnders (1985-) surprised viewers with a change to its usual credits. In addition to the now iconic image of the river Thames winding through the heart of London, a closing scene was added – this transported audiences to a projected dystopian future in which the impacts of climate emergency were stark. In this imagined future, the Thames has burst its banks leaving parts of London under water including EastEnders’ fictional Albert Square. As the camera zoomed out, audiences were eventually left with a final satellite image of the Arctic designed to underline the connected nature of the climate emergency – that melting ice in this frozen ‘faraway’ region can and ultimately will affect our future daily lives. This was a novel collaboration to promote the final episode of critically acclaimed series Frozen Planet II (2022). The aim was reportedly to highlight the challenges faced by the planet’s frozen regions due to climate warming and specifically to warn of rising sea levels – predicted to rise by as much as two metres. EastEnders was thus used as a tool to anchor this powerful message of environmental crisis which ‘could 1 day affect us much closer to home’. ¹ Arguably the unique collaboration created an additional layer of advertising for the final episode of David Attenborough’s series Frozen Planet, screened at 8 p.m., on Sunday 16 October, on BBC One and BBC iPlayer, potentially attracting different audiences with perhaps less obvious interest in the blue-chip nature documentary series. Sustainable actions at the level of local community have of course helped add rich texture to the socially realistic setting of EastEnders. Storylines highlighting ‘Walford’s Green Week’ (2016) depicted school recycling with characters being shown attempting to obtain council funding for wall and loft insulation. The serial introduced a new electric car sharing scheme and charging point and the local garage began to sell electric cars, adding markers of sustainability to mise-en-scene. The commitment also reportedly extends off screen with the production claiming that technical and prop vans are now hybrid, food consumed on set is vegetarian by default (with permitted exceptions where the script specifies meat) and all compostable waste is collected routinely for anaerobic digestion.

In 2021, in a much publicised cross-over involving all five UK soaps and two continuing dramas, EastEnders joined rival soap operas Coronation Street (1960-), Emmerdale (1972-) and Hollyoaks (1995-) alongside medical dramas Doctors (2000-2024), Casualty (1986-) and Holby City (1999-2022) in a co-ordinated set of stories focused on the environment and scheduled to coincide with the COP26 conference in Glasgow, Scotland from 31st October to 12^th November (BBC, 2021) Aligning with public external events is not a new departure for the programme nor is the programme’s ability to generate ‘talk’ well beyond the fan base itself. Columnist Joanna Williams, writing in politically conservative, Spectator magazine was scathing:

There is so much wrong with this plan it makes me want to cry more than an episode of Casualty. For a start, who is not aware of climate change? Never mind saving the planet, soap opera scriptwriters clearly think their audience lives on another planet. Whether it’s net zero, carbon neutral, recycling, renewables, St Greta or COP26. (2021)

This argument is not only predicated on the assumption that EastEnders is simply another populist space for ‘a lecture on climate change’ but takes issue with the fact that soap fans are being forced to confront environmental issues in a genre which foregrounds the personal sphere over the public; as she says we have ‘grown used to plots that revolve around social issues. But there is something creepy about the co-ordinated climate change plots’. Could it be the case that public issue saturation in the soaps means that environmental issues on the (small) screen represent the new controversy? We might ask what questions are provoked by this and the surrounding public and policy discourse?

Perspectives on soaps and the role of prime time in social change

Storytelling about substantive public issues has been considered important not only for awareness raising but in terms of catalysing action and inspiring hope; as Singhal 2013 notes, stories have significant power:

to attract our attention, spark our imagination, and paint new scenarios of hope; the power to experience vicarious struggles and epic wins; the power to demonstrate how ‘monsters’ – whether personal or societal – can be overcome, vanquished. It distils the essence of the entertainment-education (EE) strategy in communication, capturing its purposive intent to vanquish societal ‘monsters’ like gender inequality, domestic violence, malnutrition, and suffering from HIV/AIDS. (Singhal, 2013:1)

To this list might we add the grand challenges? Climate emergency? Pollution of our air, water or human body? As environmental issues such as plastics pollution move from the specialist science media into the mainstream in terms of public and policy discourse, this is a novel opportunity to explore the limits and possibilities of the continuing drama, and EastEnders, specifically to address these anthropogenic crises.

Over its 40-year history, BBC flagship soap opera EastEnders has successfully maintained a sustained track record at the forefront of boundary breaking storylines frequently depicting taboo or sensitive topics in prime time entertainment (Geraghty, 1991; Henderson, 2017). These stories include public mental health issues and societal challenges concerning gender-based violence and racial intolerance. As with other soaps the programme has foregrounded the lived experience of societal groups who are frequently marginalised in other media (e.g. older women). The programme has had measurable impacts in terms of shaping public understandings and behaviours in distinctive ways and successfully led to media and policy discussion of substantive topics which were frequently sidelined or erased entirely in wider factual formats (Henderson, 2007, 2017). In this paper I explore the definitional role of the programme in addressing environmental issues. While appearing to be an obvious issue-based topic, appropriate for television prime time, in fact sustainability related storytelling has traditionally presented challenges within entertainment-education. Environmental issues have been marginalised within popular programme content (McComas et al., 2001; Rissel and Douglas, 1993) and the interest in framing environmental issues within prime time television from the 1990s to 2000s has remained consistently low with mainly ‘in passing’, secondary references to the topic (Shanahan et al., 2015). Those representations, for example, of ‘green consumerism’ are thus incidental to the storytelling rather than overt and are frequently used as a cultural ‘shorthand’ to help signify middle class values. Environmental stories typically sideline human agency in favour of fatalistic representations (Campbell, 2014) and frequently ‘delink’ environmental concerns from other lifestyle issues such as relationships or money (Shanahan et al., 1997). Environmentally conscious characters have proved to be unpopular with audiences who rejected an overly didactic and judgemental approach to entertainment (Reinermann et al., 2014). The requirements of personalised stories, melodrama and narrative pace for the soap opera format present additional challenges as we have witnessed with other structural systemic inequalities which tend to be developed within limited ideological frames (Henderson, 2017). The low cultural value attached traditionally to the soap opera format means that scientists and environmental campaigners have been reluctant to engage with popular television and instead prioritise national legacy media which they perceive to be appropriate conduits for credible science reporting (Farnsworth and Lichter, 2012).

Nonetheless, popular television has played a central role in disseminating science and public health issues to mainstream audiences with some evidence of success. For example, in certain circumstances it appears that the soap opera genre can help modify behaviour health seeking behaviour including breast cancer and chronic conditions (Henderson, 2007; Singhal and Rogers, 1999). Continuing drama including medical and crime genres, also attracts audiences which are more diverse than those engaging with news media (including having lower formal educational attainment). This means the genre remains at the forefront of channel identity and crucially commercial imperatives, delivering audiences for the channel as the ‘ultimate consumer product’ (Hayward, 1992). Soap operas are a trusted source of information with high levels of confidence expressed by audiences in the accuracy of medical information embedded in storylines (Davin, 2003). The soap opera also engenders a distinctive intense audience identification and sense of community (Brunsdon, 2000; Madill and Goldmeier, 2003). The multiplicity of perspectives which can be facilitated within a single episode makes the format unique in terms of framing and defining issues. While the format is ideologically bounded it is, in theory, possible to include transgressive or subversive representations which may critique mainstream framing in news media concerning specific controversial issues (Klein, 2011). BBC drama in general, and EastEnders specifically, is widely accepted as an exemplar of the ‘entertainment-education’ approach (Cody et al., 2004). Its strong public service ideology and roots in the Reithian values of ‘inform, educate, entertain’ is considered to facilitate audience resistance to current neo-liberal discourses. Thus, EastEnders’ fans express ‘their belief in values that are closer to those of social democracy from which current definitions of public service broadcasting historically derive, such as solidarity, dialogue and engagement with the community’ (Lamuedra and O’Donnell, 2013, 59). Interestingly, the senior production team at EastEnders have been careful to consistently reject any sense of the programme playing a primarily educational role (Buckingham, 1987; Henderson, 2007, 2017; Klein 2011, 2013). Yet unsurprisingly the production has been the object of intensive lobbying from its inception as charities and organisations compete directly to collaborate with the programme and thus acquire exposure well beyond the audiences for news media even in this fragmented contemporary media landscape.

Methods and materials

This study extends my previous research which examined the production context and definitional power of social issue storylines (Henderson, 2007; 2017) and explores novel territory. Production studies of popular television are rare if we consider the volume of analyses focused on the nature of representation, audiences’ distinctive engagement with their viewing experience and the contribution of the genre to developing a rich scholarship in feminist television studies (Geraghty et al., 2016). Given that EastEnders has a strong economic imperative to deliver audiences for the channel, the brand is understandably controlled tightly within the BBC management structure. I had already received ethical approval and undertaken 6 interviews when I was contacted by a BBC representative keen to find out more about context of the study. While the response was tentatively positive, I was asked to wait for formal press office confirmation before accessing current members of the EastEnders writing team. ² This authorisation did not materialise and thus the perspectives presented in this paper do not represent the full production study as planned originally, and which involved a range of current and former professionals who could reflect upon the programme history from differing points in the production hierarchy. Nonetheless these reflections do help inform analysis of the role and legacy of EastEnders and provide valuable perspectives on the current programme context and future. The reluctance to engage with academic research is also arguably a finding worthy of note and reflects the tight controls exerted by the channel hierarchy on their writers. I have conducted a number of television production studies in the past with this and other major prime time drama programmes without issue

All interviews were focused upon the role of popular television in communicating environmental issues, with questions and further probes related to decision-making practices concerning environmental storytelling. Interviewees were asked for comparisons to further illuminate their reflections; television production personnel tend to speak generically about the role of drama or shifts in making television so it was important to anchor their responses to EastEnders and to probe for examples. This specificity sheds light on shifts over time as well as professionals’ self-image and how they attach meaning to their role. I had developed a topic guide but the interviews were sufficiently wide ranging to allow for space for professionals to address their personal motivations and professional vision. Interviews focused on how decisions regarding environmental issue are made and how these might compare with the decision-making concerning other storylines such as public health. The aim was to explore internal and external factors that influence representation (the overall programme ethos; occupational culture; shifts in funding; constructing scripts; casting the role). Interviews were audio-recorded with permission and transcribed verbatim using online tools, and then checked in detail alongside recordings. I conducted a preliminary analysis after the first interview (Silverman, 2011) and reviewed recordings and notes to help me develop a tentative coding scheme by categorising extracts into broad themes. Thematic analysis was conducted to generate themes in an inductive approach (Braun and Clarke, 2013) which identified patterns of meaning in the dataset. I analysed data manually using an open coding framework in which numerical codes were applied to each interview to highlight variation in response (e.g. exploring and unpacking different understandings of ‘good’ collaborations or the grounds on which writers judge storylines as ‘successful’). I marked key passages according to analytical themes using some of the principles of grounded theory, developing analytical constructs which were then applied to the sample allowing me to confirm, reject or modify concepts. Data were analysed for recurring or dominant themes among participants regarding their knowledge, beliefs and experiences related to developing stories with an environmental theme.

Engaging the ‘hard to reach’ audience

For each of my interviewees the role of soap opera narratives in environmental communication was considered crucial. This was on the two key grounds of generating impact and thus fulfilling an important cultural function as public service broadcaster and connecting with distinctive audiences. The sheer scale of EastEnders audiences, the ability to attract younger people to storylines, and to engage those who may be typically disinterested in environmental issues as depicted in factual television were also cited as positive reasons for EastEnders playing a central role. The potential power of the programme was even compared to The Day After (1983) which presented a fictional account of the aftermath of nuclear attack. While clearly this TV feature film represents a very different formal and narrative context for storytelling as compared with a soap opera storyline, it was referenced as symbolic of the transformational impact of fictional narratives on public issues. The film was reportedly key to challenging the views of US President Ronald Reagan, and through repeated film screenings, it had identifiable material consequences – catalysing a national movement ‘to sensitise a huge number of citizens to the horrors of nuclear war and to mobilize them to take action’ (Schofield and Pavalchak, 1985). One of my interviewees described it thus:

People, particularly younger audiences, want solutions . . . and they want to believe that a lot of these answers are positive, which they are . . . less pollution, less asthma but there’s also a lot of fear, it is scary. Stories are very powerful when they tell that story well . . . and ultimately you are changing the narrative like The Day After.

The scale of audiences which EastEnders attracts for single episodes is also now considered to be rare in television because of the changes in the nature of television and how most audiences consume programme content – moving from linear to ‘on demand’ viewing. This has impacted the availability of large-scale audiences of the late 1980s with soap opera episodes acting as national ‘social glue’ to unite viewers in the act of viewing – famously 30 million viewers watched EastEnders Christmas day episode of 1986. Television audiences are still highly desirable but harder to reach, as one interviewee explained: ‘the way that TV works now is so different. Apart from the soaps, you don’t really have those huge moments of coming together’. Another interviewee added:

EastEnders are regular hitters in terms of getting incredible audience share and it's the kinds of audience, isn't it? It's like the audience that are not necessarily going to be watching the documentaries, that don’t necessarily care that much because there's other stuff going on, or there's other worries like cost of living. 5 million, 6 million [viewers] probably for their biggest stories…it's still powerful numbers, especially compared to the rest of the industry. Most programs will probably be lucky to get a million now.

Across the interviews with professionals working in the sustainability field, there was also a strong theme around EastEnders’ audience demographics and attracting diverse audiences. Much of this was underpinned by an emphasis on storytelling which had a central theme and commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. In the view of this interviewee, it is entirely possible to package stories attractively and align with progressive values which will appeal to younger audiences and their priorities:

We are looking at audiences of the future. How do we bring in younger audiences? EDI is very strong as well. How do we make sure that we are catering for everybody? The sweet spot is finding an ED and I sustainability story. For example, the way people cook now is so different because nobody uses their ovens. This is from research, people are using air fryers. There’s this massive cultural shift that's bringing down people's energy consumption because it's cool, it's desirable, it's something new.

Packaging climate action

An important factor which shapes storytelling about environmental issues is the BBC commitment to impartiality. As a core value of BBC editorial guidelines, this is fundamental to the reputation, values and trust of audiences in the BBC and has implications for campaigns regardless of merit of the cause. As a public service broadcaster, it is crucial to map programme impact on audiences yet for the BBC this is complex. The content editor and TV lead for sustainability explained:

We can’t measure our success on the basis of signatures to a petition or policy objectives achieved. Our remit is fundamentally to inform, educate and entertain. These three principles are incredibly powerful, to inspire audiences when they make choices for themselves, for society and for the planet. When we do this at scale we can open up a space for national conversation about who we are and what we want. ³

Environmental issues being framed as politically driven also works against BBC values in particular ways which means that stories risk straying into ‘campaign’ territory which is contrary to the public service ethos and strict guidelines on BBC remit:

You can’t be seen to campaign, and the editors would go, ‘we can’t talk about WRAP ⁴ because that’s a charity. We can’t tell people to eat two less meat meals a week or ditch the car or take the train . . . if 20 million people did it that’s like a campaign. The BBC don’t let you do campaigns, [research found] 85% of people would donate 1% of their income to climate causes. But [most people] think that nobody else cares. We can fill that perception gap [and] show that people care rather than preaching and telling people that they're doing things wrong.

Engaging audiences and ‘bringing them with’ you was considered a central challenge in relation to environmental storytelling with all interviewees alert to the possibility that climate related storylines could risk leaving audiences feeling hopeless and pessimistic. The complex nature of environmental crises such as plastics pollution also presented challenges in terms of raising awareness without providing a solution. As one interviewee explained ‘plastics [are] terrible but you have to give audiences a solution, that gives people agency, which helps to reduce climate anxiety’.

Jargon associated with climate action including phrases such as ‘net zero’ or ‘circular economy’ has been critiqued on the grounds that, rather than engaging audiences, they simply alienate them. As one climate lead explained, it is precisely this space in which EastEnders and other continuing dramas have a central role to play as audiences can witness climate action reframed as typical, routine actions with tangible benefits to local communities and families:

We never frame it as climate action. It’s just ‘this is normal just do it. Think about your food waste. It's going to save you money, but it’s good for the planet. Think about your energy use, conserving water, how you travel. Think about your children’. Community action as a phrase was not really accepted [by audiences] They didn’t like that term because they didn't understand what we meant by it. So we need to think about how we communicate that better.

In this context, we should consider EastEnders as forming part of a wider industry commitment to integrating climate content in prime time. Broadcasters have signed a climate content pledge which means that the strategic goals of measuring media impact on climate awareness and possible collaboration between academic research and real-world applications need to be embedded in every programming decision in terms of commissioning documents. The sustainability initiative Albert is funded by major broadcasters under BAFTA to promote positive framing and normalising of climate action on screen as well as developing industry standards for sustainable studio production.

Authentic storytelling in a declining industry?

Storytelling about environmental issues was considered to provide fruitful and productive content which could emphasise the human dimensions of anthropogenic crisis. As an experienced sustainability lead commented:

The key to finding well scripted stories that involve climate and environment is finding social injustice stories with associated climate themes. Focusing on the human social injustice of social or racial inequality and air pollution or energy poverty for example. . . is an area that has not been explored to full potential yet.

Writers also spoke of some of the challenges facing the industry more broadly with some expressing cynicism for the future of creative storytelling in an environment which has never been more driven by commercial imperatives:

The finances aren’t great at the moment, and the boom’s over when all the Netflix giants were making stuff . . . most companies I go and see are just businesses, it’s not about artistic vision. It's not about necessarily telling the story, unless you’re a high profile writer, Brad Pitt wants to make it or it’s got a big hitter like Sarah Lancashire in it and even then. . .

The financial struggles in the industry, and what was assumed to be an associated shift towards violent thriller-based programme content, presented distinct challenges to conveying important societal issues through drama. Writers emphasised the need for authentic storytelling that resonates with audiences, particularly young people, and the potential for using characters to address environmental concerns like plastic pollution. Here there were specific challenges to consider, including building the environmental story within a standard dramatic framework ‘that’s the hardest sell in the world – so it doesn’t appear to be about the issue – ultimately that’s the end game’. The focus on crime-related content was in their view due to those formats being easily understood by international audiences which means such programmes are successfully exported beyond the UK and generate income regardless of how they are received in the UK market.

Younger audiences also consume media differently and this was a point made by writers who believed that attracting the Gen Z audience impacted negatively on storytelling because there was a strong perception that ‘you’re up against people who just watch three seconds on Tikok’. In this regard, EastEnders was mentioned specifically as having speeded up their storytelling such that an environmental storyline would be unlikely to be given prominence as compared with other stories:

EastEnders has to compete with the TikTok generation, Generation Z who are staring at their phones while watching telly. It’s not the undivided attention of 70 million plus watching. . . . you could have a young character into the environment, tell a story through her . . . they would be swamped by the five other stories going through that same episode. [Programme producers] would ask, ‘what is the doof doof?’ [the drum beats of the EastEnders theme which signify the cliff hanger to end each episode] Would you end on her? Or would you end on a person with a knife.

Clearly writers who no longer work with the programme will have a particular view on EastEnders and are likely to express more critical analysis than current members of the production team. Thus, the view was expressed that the programme is now in an era of accelerated storytelling meaning that:

issue stories don’t really land because you’re already on to building the next one . . . in the old days, we used to take our time and sometimes revisit if you could get it to result in some quite shocking revelation at the end of it, it’d all be worth it. You would get the payoff. Now they would try and do it in a month, rather than seven or eight months. Their perception is the audience don’t want to invest the time.

This writer discussed how EastEnders had operated successfully during the COVID-19 pandemic when filming was disrupted by lockdown restrictions (Lee, 2020). As a consequence, the programme integrated these issues into several storylines and the episodes were shortened to 20 minutes to account for the production team’s limited access to the set and to enable social distancing required by actors. This reflected EastEnders’ commitment to societal issues and attracted praise for catalysing difficult conversations, for example, regarding the increase in domestic violence during lockdown. While senior production team members emphasised the need for writers to ‘speed up’ storytelling, others expressed a different view rooted in perceptions of time as integral to storytelling as a craft. As one interviewee explained:

You need to slow down. You can tell a slow story in 20 minutes. It won't feel like a slow story . . . but it’s all ‘No, it’s not gonna land, it’s not gonna hit’. It’s just a fear that audiences will get bored and switch off . . . they should have just stuck to their guns [but now] everyone’s devouring issues

Within the storytelling context, authentic, credible writing was considered to involve ‘time’ with a gradual unfolding of the story. There was also a strong assumption that interpersonal friction or tension between two characters who may embody different (ideally opposing) positions on a topic could provide fertile material for storyline development. While it would be possible to work in a new environmental storyline, any successful story arc requires tension to shape dynamics:

You need to create a challenge, maybe an environmental story alongside an industry line. You have to think about the victims on both sides of the argument. Where one [member of a family] works in a company. The money they have is the thing that keeps them together, keeps a roof over their heads but the other is working for the wrong person, for all the wrong reasons and having to see the effects of it on their partner. . . that sounds a bit amorphous but you always make it [focused on] the human dimension – it has to be.

In the context of certain public issues being brought to prime time audiences there are identifiable shared understandings – rules of the game – within production teams about storytelling priorities which operate at the unspoken tacit level. Despite the production context of a soap opera representing quite a different context to that of the newsroom in terms of occupational cultures, it is nonetheless fascinating to unpack the ingredients of a ‘strong soap story’, if you like a ‘soap sense’. This central concern with representing both sides is a strong civic ethos rooted in the British public service broadcasting model and understood and reproduced unquestioningly by audiences. For example, media formats which show audiences ‘both sides’ of an argument including industry and NGO perspectives appears to engender additional trust in the message (Henderson and Green, 2020). In the context of environmental storytelling in general, and climate action in particular, this can of course result in creating a false equivalency where marginalised ideas which lack scientific support or consensus (e.g. climate denial) can be awarded broadcasting space in the efforts to avoid accusations of bias.

Where next for EastEnders and the environment?

It is vital that we study media formats ‘as pieces of larger media ecosystems in which the presence or absence (or strength or weakness) of a professional deontology enforced to at least some degree by public service media corporations, among other institutions, is highly influential’ (Lamuedra and O’Donnell, 2013: 59) In this paper, I have aimed to address some of the underpinning assumptions about EastEnders and its changing audiences and how wider cultural shifts in audiences’ expectations and broadcasting culture may shape the selection and packaging of environmental related content. Engaging with large audiences who may strategically ignore or actively avoid similar material in factual media is clearly of central concern. Envisaging those audiences and their imagined priorities does however appear to skew the ways in which stories are selected and developed on screen. Here, an underpinning anxiety on the part of senior production team members about the programme’s falling audience numbers, difficulties in maintaining sustained audience attention and competition from the short compelling storytelling available on demand through social media platforms such as TikTok appears to lead to a narrow focus in content and an acceleration in how stories are handled. Intra-story competition means that environmental issues will be jostling for position with multiple ongoing stories whose content is perhaps more obviously dramatic and can thus provide the crucial cliff hanger moments on which continuing drama depends (the so-called ‘doof doof’ ending).

In this sense it is possible to envisage that a hierarchy of environmental storytelling could emerge within popular television where everyday stories of flooding provide sufficient narrative pace to take precedence over slower environmental stories such as emerging chronic health impacts of pollution. For writers there appeared to be strong assumptions that environmental storytelling must also provide a source of tension and friction ideally within family relationships – the heart of continuing drama which relies on familiar tropes of disruption to family life with themes of love versus money or ambition. As noted earlier, there is also the considerable risk that discredited voices will be allowed equal exposure to popular narratives thus conflating misinformation with accepted scientific consensus. This becomes even more of a concern when we consider the lack of engagement by environmental scientists with a programme such as EastEnders in a striking contrast with the strong collaborative partnerships the programme has developed with specialist medical advisors over decades.

It is important to consider the dynamic production context in which storytelling takes place and which is currently in a state of flux. While the format may accommodate environmental issues, the continuing drama provides a distinctive space for intersectional representations, foregrounding the experiences of those impacted and who are also already disadvantaged in terms of health inequalities and media representation (e.g. people of colour, older people, those living with long-term conditions or physical or cognitive disabilities). Members of these groups are precisely those who are predicted to be impacted disproportionately by climate change. In this respect, intersectional environmental storytelling may not only provide rich content for EastEnders but also help the programme to fulfil its public service role. Inspiring hope in audiences and representing a positive fictional future rooted in scientifically based material can contribute to alleviating eco anxiety – a significant concern amongst younger people. Indeed, it seems somewhat ironic that assumptions about elusive younger audiences and ‘what they want’ might result in marginalising rather than emphasising climate related stories.

Given the contemporary hostile television environment with intense competition from subscription services and platforms, it is not possible to predict the future of EastEnders. According to Broadcast, the special live episode to mark the 40^th Anniversary on 20 February 2025 was watched by 3.8 million viewers whereas the 30^th Anniversary attracted over 10 million viewers on 20 February 2015 (McHugh, 2025). This represents a significant decline in the reach of the programme despite contemporary audiences being offered the unique opportunity – for continuing drama – to vote on a storyline outcome in ‘real time’ (the resolution of a traditional romantic ‘triangle’ and opportunity to name a character’s baby – ‘Julia’ or ‘Toni’ in honour of EastEnders creators Julia Smith and Tony Holland).

Rather than attempting to compete on the terrain of reality television public votes or Instagram short form videos it may prove fruitful for EastEnders to mobilise the unique tools of the continuing drama. These include human-centred narratives, multiple perspectives, revisiting a story over considerable time, playing the issue out with existing characters who have built an intense connection with their audiences rather than the compressed, ephemeral storytelling of social media. If packaged successfully, then the continuing drama could be at the heart of communicating climate action and making the vital connections between the global planetary crisis and local everyday life.