And
so to Christmas in Albert Square, courtesy of the EastEnders.
Dear Lord, where do I start?
Let’s begin with the basics. Ian’s glasses. Get him a decent pair. Enough said on that front.
Jane and Ian in bed together.
Sorry, I just wasn’t buying it. Unlike Ian, who has done exactly that in the
past. The idea that he could get it any other way is, of course preposterous.
Laughable, even.
The Nazir family getting into the
spirit of Christmas. They’ve only just had presents for one of their bi-annual
Eid celebrations. Now they’re just being greedy.
Okay, now on to the big stuff. It
is only a year since the Carter family moved into the Square, but they soon
made it their own, so much so that I have taken to calling it CartEnders, which
it undoubtedly is.
Now, Danny Dyer as Mick Carter.
It’s a thin line between acting emotion and looking as if you can’t quite see
because you’ve lost a contact lens, and over the festive period Mick lost a lot
of contact lenses. Even when Linda told him she had been raped by Dean, it
looked as if he was scanning the floor in case said lost lens should saucer
into view.
This was supposed to be a big
climactic moment, but this, along with so much else, seemed to be more of a spoof
than real drama. The whole gamut of “The Dummies Guide to Expression Acting” was here. There was
SITMD (Staring Into The Middle Distance) Nancy; Angry Shirley; Hurt Mick
(Optrex, you should really keep your eye on this one – I see a lucrative
advertising deal beckoning); Jolly But Secretly Worried Babe; Botox Bruvver of
Mick (I still have no idea what his name is); and so many other CartEnders, I
would get Repetitive Strain Injury were I to start writing about them all.
Now, let me set the scene for The
Big Moment. My mum and I were on the sofa, having been watching TV for what
seemed like years (nothing on, as always), and enjoying (I use the word very
loosely) the usual EastEnders unhappy Christmas. Just as Mick had taken to the
floor to find another lost contact lens (or beat up on Dean, as they would have
us believe), Shirley tried to bring a halt to the proceedings by announcing that
Dean was, in fact Mick’s bruvver (although, in fairness, she did say “brother”;
it’s just funnier the other way).
Quite why she thought this would
stop Mick is anybody’s guess. Even the most cursory reading of the Cain and
Abel story should be indication enough that the sure way guaranteed to
encourage someone to beat another to a pulp is by shouting “He’s your brother!”
It stopped Mick in his tracks,
but he soon announced that this made no difference whatsoever, and off he went
on another contact lens hunting expedition, stopping only to find Linda’s ring
left on the bedroom dresser. I like to think that she has merely nipped off to
the hairdresser, because, to be frank, not since Mary turned up at the stable
without a hairdryer has such a messy coiffure graced Christmas.
I watched it all again at about
2am, just to be certain the whole thing hadn’t been a ridiculous dream, but, alas, it hadn’t. Does Shirley really
look 14 years older than Mick (she claimed she had him at that age). Would Stan
(the always terrific Timothy West, who must really have been desperate for the
money to take this role on) really not have twigged that when his wife went off
to a caravan for a few months and returned with a baby, that all might not be
as it seemed?
I really rate producer Dominic
Treadwell Collins, who returned to the show at the end of 2012 and breathed new
life into it. But the CartEnders have taken over to the detriment of other
characters. It’s good to see Nick Cotton (John Altman) back – the show needed a
new villain, albeit a resurrected one – and there can never be enough Mitchells
for my liking.
It seems as if the CartEnders are
here to stay, though, with news of renewed contracts and, doubtless, more
branches of the family crawling out of the woodwork.
In the meantime, Mick, I
really hope you find that contact lens.
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