Thursday 18 February 2010

Celebrating Eastender 25th Anniversary: The 'Enders Highest Rated Cliffhanger!

EastEnders / Dirty Den gives Angie divorce papers for Christmas - EastEnders - BBC



Oh, you should know already! The most talked about as they say now "duff, duff" moment was when Dennis "Dirty Den" Watts shocked the unbeknownst Angie Watts by handing over those divorce papers after 20 years of marriage! This was the climax to the already heated, thunderous and argumentative relationship between the 2. despite the fact Den had a mistress in early 1986, being the name of Jan Hammond, he was a popular character, and the viewers wanted to see Angie getting a come-uppance after blatently lying about the fact she was dying from cancer and only had six months to live. This was her twisted plot to keep the marriage alive. Den was skeptical at first, but was taken in by Angie's ill...and suicidal behaviour. The famous scene on Christmas Day 1986 that took place in the narrow back hall of the Queen Vic pub, was set in stone, once Den discovered, on holiday in Venice, Italy with Angie, having overheared her admittance to the cancer being all one big lie!

Despite the fact Eastenders had only ran the year before, and even if you take into account everybody only had 4 channels. The success and media press of the show at that time that helped catapult their initial viewer ratings of 17 million, to nearly double that, for this Christmas special episode. It achieved 30.1 million viewers, the highest ever achieved by a British soap, and still is the record. It's amazing, it's up there with the death of Princess Diana and the '66 World Cup! The gritty realism that was displayed in Eastenders, helped many viewers to be able to relate to the characters very much so.

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