by Joe Allan
While he would be the first to admit his film career was not where he wanted it to be, he was still working regularly. The real gain from the EastEnders job was diversification. He had much more to offer now and was determined to stop the rot that had set in over the last three or four years. He laid it out simply, ‘I want to show people, a different audience, what I can do.’
It was this promise that excited the decision makers at the BBC. A new executive producer had been appointed at the EastEnders production offices, challenged with reversing the fortunes of the flagging soap, which had recently fallen dramatically below its expected viewing figures and slipped embarrassingly far behind ITV’s rival soap, Coronation Street, in the ratings. With the appointment of Dominic Treadwell-Collins in July 2013, the message couldn’t be clearer: the BBC was giving its flagship drama a makeover ahead of its fast-approaching thirtieth birthday.
First on Treadwell-Collins’ agenda would be a complete overhaul of the story-writing process. Out went disaster-based plots involving fires, explosions and the untimely deaths of several cast members in increasingly far-fetched scenarios, and in came interesting, relatable and three-dimensional characters backed by intricate, slow-burn plotting and compelling storytelling. It was obvious that this would signal the introduction of some new faces to the cast and one man was key to Treadwell-Collins’ vision for the future of EastEnders. That man was Danny Dyer.
CHAPTER TEN
HEADING EAST
When EastEnders’ newly appointed executive producer, Dominic Treadwell-Collins, agreed to return to the show after a three-year absence, he already had a fairly good idea of what it needed to do to pull itself out of a rating slump. He told the Radio Times, ‘When EastEnders is at its best, it changes the world a little bit. EastEnders isn’t about propaganda, but it is about life, which makes it a very powerful show.’ Away from the soap, as an interested outsider, he had watched as, in his eyes, his beloved EastEnders had lost much of that power, suffering an inexorable decline over the previous sixteen months.
Over the years, EastEnders had earned its place at the top of the weekly television ratings with an exciting mix of explosive storylines and authentic family drama, enjoying along the way its fair share of headline-grabbing press coverage. But by the start of 2013, things were starting to feel decidedly stale and the show was beginning to look more like a parody of itself than must-see TV. Newman’s reign had been cut short when column inches, and more importantly, viewing figures, had started to decline. As David Brown commented in a Radio Times article in early 2014, ‘Once upon a time, the show’s tagline was “Everybody’s talking about it”. In 2013, nobody was, except to say how dull it had become.’ Treadwell-Collins was determined to stop the rot, and his reign as showrunner would launch under the banner, ‘Everything’s about to change’. He had a plan. He was going to look back to the golden years of the soap – its 1980s and 1990s heyday – and bring back some of that old magic.
Treadwell-Collins recalled his early fascination with the show in the same interview with the Radio Times: ‘I’d never felt an affinity with Coronation Street . . . I liked EastEnders because it felt dangerous, real and naughty, and also that it was saying something about life.’ Part of the affinity Treadwell-Collins felt could have been geographic, he explained. ‘I grew up in Radlett in Hertfordshire, which is about ten minutes down the road from where EastEnders is filmed in Elstree, and I’d go along to the studio and stick my head through the gates.’ When the show began in 1985, Treadwell-Collins was only eight years-old, but undoubtedly he was as enthralled as the rest of the UK when the BBC launched its first primetime evening soap. The hype promised a unique mix of everyday family issues and a level of gritty realism that had long since evaporated from the cobbled streets of Weatherfield – Coronation Street’s fictional home.
EastEnders’ first episode, broadcast on 19 February 1985, pulled in an audience of 17 million viewers, and within the space of two years the show had become a permanent fixture as the nation’s favourite. The Christmas Day episode that aired in 1986 climaxed with the owners of the Queen Vic, Den and Angie Watts (as played by Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson), finally ending their tempestuous marriage as Den handed Angie divorce papers. It attracted over 30 million viewers, becoming the top-rated episode of a soap in British television history – a record that still stands today. While never quite reaching these dizzy heights again, the show’s characters soon became household names, evolving into some of British television’s best-loved and most iconic creations.
Treadwell-Collins wasn’t immune to the EastEnders fever sweeping the country, and it was his status as a die-hard fan and his general interest in how television was made that got him a job at various television production companies after graduating from university. He started in 2000, with a stint on ITV’s popular crime series, Midsomer Murders, where, according to an interview with the Digital Spy website, he spent a year ‘coming up with ways to kill people’. While that was a skill that would later prove invaluable in his role as a story editor at EastEnders, he would spend the next four years as the story producer on Channel Five’s Family Affairs, which was sadly cancelled after securing its first wins at the British Soap Awards.
He first arrived at the EastEnders production office in 2005. When asked by Digital Spy what his dream job would be, he said, ‘Do you know what? It’s this,’ referencing how his childhood fantasy of working at the nearby Elstree Studios was coming true.
Under his guidance, the show would refocus its original intention to deliver realistic, issue-led, family drama. It would strive to push boundaries in terms of tackling taboo subjects and his masterstroke would be turning the viewer’s attention back onto one of the show’s most popular families, the Mitchell clan, introducing the characters of Roxy and Ronnie and kick-starting a long gestating storyline that ended with the murder of the girl’s father, Archie Mitchell, played by Larry Lamb. The show’s most high-profile cliffhanger in years, ‘Who Killed Archie?’, would be Treadwell-Collins’ crowning glory: A slow-brewing storyline that climaxed with the revelation of the killer during the show’s first live episode, staged to coincide with EastEnders’ twenty-fifth anniversary, in February 2010. That episode attracted more than 16 million viewers and acted as a respectable signing-off point for Treadwell-Collins, who moved on soon after. The offer to return to EastEnders as executive producer three years later, however, was just too tempting for him to resist and it signalled a massive overhaul of the BBC’s flagship drama. He had seen the show at its best – even if it was as a schoolboy with his nosed pressed against the glass – and he knew what had made EastEnders essential viewing.
In an interview with the Radio Times in January 2014, he said, ‘It’s good to have one foot in the past while looking to the future . . . My idea is to make the show feel fresh with [the new characters], but also a bit nostalgic by bringing back characters we love.’
Treadwell-Collins unveiled his plan to not only repopulate the show with a few of its most popular characters, but also to bring back some of the best actors from the show’s long and esteemed history. Over the next few months, his strategy saw Natalie Cassidy, Lacey Turner, Matt Di Angelo, Michael French and Samantha Womack returning to the Walford fold in the roles of Sonia Fowler, Stacey Branning, Deano Wicks, David Wicks and Ronnie Mitchell respectively. Treadwell-Collins also started a process of refocusing attention on the Square’s main families; thus, Carol Jackson’s cancer storyline would pull the Jackson clan back onto centre stage, while a heartbreaking plot involving Ian and his daughter Lucy would return the Beale family to the spotlight.
Rather than the overly dramatic, headline-grabbing storylines that had begun to plague all the soaps in recent years, he wanted to get back to what he thought made EastEnders special, the element at the core of any serial drama worth its salt: great characters. His dream of introducing a brand new family into the heart of the show would rely on them being believable, engaging and relatable. And he knew ex
actly who these characters should be – his own family.
Treadwell-Collins planned to base the figures of Mick and Linda – former childhood sweethearts and the couple at the head of the incoming Carter family – on his own parents. The Carters were a complete family unit of four – with various extended branches of the clan to be added at different points in the future – Mick, his wife Linda and their two grown-up kids, Nancy and Johnny, would move straight into the central, beating heart of the square, arriving as the new owners of the Queen Victoria pub. Treadwell-Collins was aware this technique had been successfully employed before by Tony Holland, one of the original creators of EastEnders, and he told the Radio Times, ‘I always knew that [Tony] used his own family as inspiration for the Fowlers ... The Carters are influenced by my own mum and dad. In fact, Johnny is a bit like me.’
The family were set to be the most important new faces in Walford since the Slaters’ arrival shook up Albert Square in 2000 with a string of dramatic storylines, including domestic abuse, secret pregnancies and convictions for prostitution. Key to his master plan was finding the right actor to play Mick Carter, and Treadwell-Collins had one man in mind.
Danny had been approached to join the EastEnders cast on a number of occasions previously, but either the timing didn’t work or the part didn’t interest him. When the producers made it known they were keen to sign him in 2009, he was on a film-making roll, having released nine movies that year. At the same time, intense early media speculation about his future involvement with the show made him nervous and he got a severe case of cold feet, said the wrong thing and consequently the idea was shelved. More recently, the roles being discussed just didn’t feel right, as he told BBC News. ‘At first I was, “No, No”. I just wasn’t really that interested . . . it’s always been the gangster or the villain and I thought, “Not really interested in that”.’ In an interview with Jonathan Ross on his TV chat show, Danny outlined his fears of being stereotyped: ‘I thought it was gonna be the obvious: run about with a shotgun, have a tear-up with Phil, last about two weeks, get blown up in a car – end of!’ He went on to reveal to the EastEnders Ultra website, ‘They came to me a couple of times The last time was . . . to be Carl [White]’. Danny went on to say, ‘I’m so glad it wasn’t the right time for me . . . it was a good part, but there was no mileage in it.’
He wasn’t wrong. Carl’s character, eventually portrayed by Daniel Coonan, arrived in Walford in mid-2013, and was quickly revealed as bad news. He began a reign of terror that included blackmail, drug dealing and attempted murder. While conceived as a classic super-villain, Carl ended up as a fairly two-dimensional bad boy, becoming one of the first victims of Treadwell-Collins’ wind of change sweeping through Albert Square upon his return to EastEnders. Coonan eventually left the soap in January 2014.
With Danny accepting Treadwell-Collins’ offer of a part shortly after the latter retook the show’s reins, it could be seen as the production team finally wearing him down. Maybe starring in a string of badly reviewed, straight-to-DVD movies had left him disillusioned about his film career and looking for an easy way out, but the truth was more complicated than just that. It’s much more accurate to say that Danny and Treadwell-Collins were simply entering into a mutually beneficial agreement – they needed each other to progress their respective agendas.
Like the executive producer, Danny was a lifelong fan of the soap, telling Paul O’Grady on his show, ‘I was brought up watching [it].’ Yet he was also aware that things had not been going too well for it in recent times. But rather than proclaiming he was coming in as its saviour, he informed O’Grady modestly that he intended to do everything he could do to help return the lost magic to the programme. ‘I think [with] EastEnders, when it’s good, it’s brilliant . . . [The show] needed a change and I was honoured to be asked to go in there.’
One of the contributing reasons to Danny’s decision to join the series was the fact that Joanne was already expecting their third child. Danny knew this could be the perfect time to look for a more permanent source of income, one that meant he would be able to spend more time at home with his growing family. He was aware, however, that taking the EastEnders job would not necessarily be the easy option. Speaking to BBC Radio 1 shortly after the announcement of his joining the cast, Danny said, ‘I thought long and hard about it and it’s just come at the right time in my career. I’ve always respected soap actors because it’s a tough gig.’ He also joked with Jonathan Ross, ‘I [thought] I should do something a bit pre-watershed for once in my life.’
More significantly, as he explained to BBC News, he had fallen under the spell of Treadwell-Collins’ enthusiasm and obvious commitment to restoring EastEnders’ former glory. He said, ‘When I met Dom, within minutes I just fell in love with him. He’s just got this amazing energy and when he explained to me the role, about taking over the Vic and coming in with a family, playing the alpha male, but not in an obvious way, it was like all my dreams come true.’
It was clear that Danny wanted a new challenge, and he was not afraid of the hard work he would have to put in to help the showrunner fully realize his vision for the introduction of the Carters and, in broader terms, for the long-term future of EastEnders as a whole. And it tied in perfectly with the developments in his personal life and recent career.
Treadwell-Collins would weed out several unpopular characters in order to make room for the new faces he needed to fulfil his ambition. Key to his strategy to reinvigorate the show was returning the focus to the dramas involving Walford’s main families, and re-energizing its main hub, the Queen Victoria pub. The Carters were set to be the first set of brand new characters to go straight into the show as the landlords of Albert Square’s main focal point. ‘Stories are going to flow out of the Vic,’ Treadwell-Collins told the BBC website. ‘ But it’s not going to be the Carter Show ... It’s going to be EastEnders.’ He elaborated on this: ‘This show works best when there’s a bomb going off at the Vic and a bomb going off at the Beales’ and a bomb going off at the Brannings. Not a literal bomb. I think that if you’re stuck for stories you blow things up.’ His agenda was clear: ‘Let another soap win “Most Spectacular Scene”. To be honest, I don’t think soaps should be about blowing things up. I think they should be about character and people. And [they should] move you.’ He finished, ‘I don’t cry about houses getting blown up.’
He reiterated his point to the Radio Times: ‘EastEnders has got to shake up the audience. We don’t want to do cover versions of greatest hits. EastEnders has to sing new songs, otherwise it doesn’t feel fresh.’ Stressing his focus would be on character over chaos, he said, ‘It also has to be about people and feelings and emotions.’
Hardly radical, but it was nonetheless a risky strategy in the television climate of bigger and better set-piece dramas, dramatic cliffhangers and controversial storylines, and Treadwell-Collins knew it would only pay off if he had the right actors. He also knew that casting Danny against type, as family man Mick Carter, would be his biggest gamble, but if he pulled it off, it would be the biggest coup the soap had scored in years.
‘Stunt’ casting and casting against type were hardly new ideas in 2013. Big-name actors have always been keen to appear in British soap operas – who could forget faces such as Sir Ian McKellen, Stephanie Beacham, Nigel Havers, Robin Askwith and even Peter Kay popping up at different times on Coronation Street, while EastEnders itself has pulled off some unlikely, but incredibly successful, casting choices. Barbara Windsor had ensured her place as a British national treasure through her work in ten Carry On films, but had never been considered a serious actress, when she first appeared as Peggy, the no-nonsense matriarch of the Mitchell clan, back in 1994. After a shaky start, she quickly found her feet, becoming a mainstay of the show for nearly twenty years. EastEnders’ most famous, and arguably most successful, piece of left-field casting came in 1987, when comedian and all-round entertainer Mike Reid joined the cast as Frank Butcher. Reid enjoyed seve
ral extended periods in the show, turning Frank into one of the most fondly remembered characters in the soap’s history. Reid gave Frank an unexpected depth, shifting effortlessly from the serious and dramatic to the comedic.
It was this kind of iconic character – immediately able to extract genuine affection from an audience – that Dominic Treadwell-Collins saw the potential for in Danny with Mick Carter. Tellingly, it was Frank Butcher’s name that came up repeatedly during Danny’s many interviews after it was announced he was joining the EastEnders cast. ‘I loved everything about [Mike Reid],’ Danny told the BBC News website. ‘He was a real East Londoner, was so funny but had a real presence about him. When he was behind the bar, [you] believed it.’ Danny asserted, ‘I’ve got a bit of Butcher about me and want to bring a bit of Frank back.’
Like Frank, Mick Carter wasn’t going to be a lone wolf; he would be a devoted family man who loved his wife and kids and would do anything to protect them. It was Danny’s belief in Treadwell-Collins’ vision of the character, a three-dimensional alpha male, but first and foremost a family man, which was key to his accepting the executive producer’s offer to join the cast.
