Like him or loathe him - He is very witty
Sunday People
COP THIS FOR COBBLERS!
GOOD old EastEnders, they certainly know how to lift the spirits at Christmas time.
Mental illness, prison torment, shouting and screaming, unwelcome images of Frank Butcher konging his Whopper...
And you thought torture had been abolished. Sit through this week's episodes in one go, and you wouldn't know whether to hang the holly or hang yourself. What are they going to do for an encore? Bump off Nana? Actually, yes! The poor old dear pops her clogs next Friday. Sad, but at least it puts an end to all that terrible suffering. Not hers, ours.
The carnival of trauma kicked off with Stacey's mad, maudlin mum moaning at her daughter in a hovel straight out of A Life Of Grime.
The never-seen Janine was going on trial for murder. Killer Chrissie was banged up. And the ghost of cobblers past returned with his familiar cry of "Paaaat". Where there's a pat, there's a moo and Frank was out to woo her back into bed. Before long he was blubbing in the toilets of a swanky wine bar, looking "like a walrus with a tan" according to a braying yuppie. (Ridiculous, walruses have small ears.)
Pat was touched. But mercifully this happened off camera.
She was excited by the view from Frank's hotel window, although I understand several Peeping Toms buzzed up and asked them to draw the curtains. "You look good," said Frank, with a straight face. (Memo to Specsavers: There's your next ad campaign.)
And lo, an hour before Walking With Monsters we were waking with them...
Why? Cos Frank had to stop Pat testifying against Janine. He was witness-nobbling, only the "l" was silent.
Even the Keystone Cops wouldn't let a major witness be got at by the father of the accused, but the producers probably thought we'd be laughing too much at the comedy relief (Jake acting hard) to notice.
ALL of this nonsense was interspersed with the relentless misery of Chrissie going spare, Jean going nuts, and Stacey slagging off all-comers for not knowing what "bi-polar" is.
Possibly cos most people still know it as manic depression.
Human life is loaded with sadness of course, but great popular drama knows how to leaven the tears with laughter. Not Enders, with its dreary social-worker mentality and plots lifted from the Samaritans' log book. You'd find more fun in Fallujah.
And there's another murder to come just after Christmas. Happy New Year? I wouldn't bank on it.
-TOP three ways to make EastEnders even more depressing: 3) A Leonard Cohen sound track. 2) An influx of Eastern European thugs, like in the real East End. 1) Film them all Christmas shopping.
