1.
Sam Mitchell (EastEnders)
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Samantha Margaret Priscilla Sam Mitchell is a fictional character from the BBC One soap opera EastEnders. The third member of the Mitchell family to be introduced, Sam enters as a 15-year-old school girl in July 1990, Westbrook quit in 1993, but Sam was reintroduced from 1995–1996 and from 1999–2000. In both her 1996 and 2000 exits, Sam was written out earlier than the producers intended due to controversies surrounding Westbrook. In 2002, the character was reintroduced for a fourth time, Medcalf left the role in 2005. In an interview with Paul OGrady, Medcalf said she would never say never to a comeback, however, when executive producer Diederick Santer decided to reintroduce the character for a brief stint in 2009, he opted to bring Westbrook back. Portrayed as headstrong, flirty and manipulative, early storylines featuring Sam concentrate on her teen elopement to the character Ricky Butcher and she goes on to feature in storylines about topless modelling, various family crises, relationships, feuds, and a short-lived marriage to Andy Hunter. Her exit storyline in 2005 is the culmination of a storyline that sees the character wrongly imprisoned for Den Watts murder. In the on-screen events, Sam is cleared of murder and released and her return in 2010 and 2016 sees her struggle with motherhood after giving birth to Jacks baby. Sam is the youngest child and only daughter of Peggy and Eric Mitchell, Eric died when Sam was ten and she was subsequently on the receiving end of her brothers, Phil and Grants, heavy-handed paternalism. Fifteen-year-old Sam follows her brothers to Walford in July 1990, unhappy at home because she dislikes her mothers boyfriend and she becomes friends with Hattie Tavernier and dates Ricky Butcher. Sams family disapproves of the relationship, so Ricky and Sam decide to elope to Gretna Green in 1991, Peggy admits defeat and attends their more formal blessing in Walford a month later. This causes problems in Ricky and Sams relationship, which is already under strain as Ricky is unable to provide Sam with the lifestyle she desires. After just a year of marriage, Sam grows bored and begins lusting after a playboy named Clive whom she meets at a New Years Eve party with her friend Mandy Salter. After having an affair, Sam thinks she has fallen in love with Clive. Realising that her marriage with Ricky is over, Sam leaves her husband, Sam returns in 1995, after her brothers, on a boys holiday in Spain, catch her in bed with David Wicks, and force her to return. Sam had tried to build herself a career as a model, back in Walford Sam tries to continue her fling with David and when this goes nowhere she tries to come between Ricky and his girlfriend, Bianca Jackson. Initially Ricky thinks he still has feelings for Sam, but eventually realises he is better off with Bianca, however Sam wont take no for an answer and purposefully kisses an innocent Ricky in front of Bianca, causing them to split. Despite this, Ricky will not reconsider getting back with Sam, Sam is forced to admit defeat
2.
BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, the BBC is the worlds oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total,16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting, the total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included. The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and used to fund the BBCs radio, TV, britains first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mails Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the Melba broadcast caught the peoples imagination and marked a turning point in the British publics attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests, John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers, to this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to inform, educate and entertain. The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate, set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee and this was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBCs broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, the BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00, and required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee, by now the BBC under Reiths leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position, the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PMs own
3.
Soap opera
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A soap opera, soap, or soapie, is a serial drama on television or radio that examines the lives of many characters, usually focusing on emotional relationships to the point of melodrama. The term soap opera originated from such dramas being typically sponsored by soap manufacturers in the past, the first serial considered to be a soap opera was Painted Dreams, which debuted on October 20,1930 on Chicago radio station WGN. The first nationally broadcast radio soap opera was Clara, Lu, and Em, a crucial element that defines the soap opera is the open-ended serial nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. One of the features that makes a television program a soap opera. While Spanish language telenovelas are sometimes called soap operas, telenovelas have conflicts that get resolved, but with soap operas each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode. You spend more time even with the characters, the apparent villains grow less apparently villainous. Soap opera storylines run concurrently, intersect and lead into further developments, each episode may feature some of the shows current storylines, but not always all of them. Soap operas rarely bring all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time, when one storyline ends, there are several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes typically end on some sort of cliffhanger, evening soap operas and those that air at a rate of one episode per week are more likely to feature the entire cast in each episode, and to represent all current storylines in each episode. Evening soap operas and serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end-of-season cliffhanger, the article explained that at that time, many prime time series lost money, while daytime serials earned profits several times more than their production costs. Fitting in with these characteristics, most soap operas follow the lives of a group of characters who live or work in a particular place, the storylines follow the day-to-day activities and personal relationships of these characters. These elements may be found across the gamut of soap operas, Due to the prominence of English-language television, most soap-operas are completely English. In many soap operas, in particular daytime serials in the US, Soap operas from the United Kingdom and Australia tend to focus on more everyday characters and situations, and are frequently set in working class environments. Many of the soaps produced in two countries explore social realist storylines such as family discord, marriage breakdown or financial problems. This diverges from US soap operas where such comedy is rare, UK soap operas frequently make a claim to presenting reality or purport to have a realistic style. Romance, secret relationships, extramarital affairs, and genuine hate have been the basis for many soap opera storylines, in US daytime serials, the most popular soap opera characters, and the most popular storylines, often involved a romance of the sort presented in paperback romance novels. Crimes such as kidnapping, rape, and even murder may go unpunished if the perpetrator is to be retained in the ongoing story, Australian and UK soap operas also feature a significant proportion of romance storylines. In Russia, most popular serials explore the romantic quality of criminal and/or oligarch life, in soap opera storylines, previously unknown children, siblings and twins of established characters often emerge to upset and reinvigorate the set of relationships examined by the series
4.
EastEnders
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EastEnders is a long running British soap opera created by Julia Smith and Tony Holland which has been broadcast on BBC One since 1985. Set in the East End of London in the fictional Bough of Walford the programme follows the stories of local residents, the series was initially screened as two 30-minute episodes per week however since 2001, episodes have been broadcast every day apart from Wednesdays and weekends. Same-day repeats and omnibus editions of the series were previously shown on BBC Three however as of 2016 these are broadcast on UK-based TV channel W. They gave the job of creating this new soap to script writer Tony Holland and producer Julia Smith and they created twenty-four original characters for the show, based upon Hollands own family, and people they remembered from their own experiences in the East End. Granada Television gave Smith unrestricted access to the Coronation Street production for a month so that she could get a sense how a continuing drama was produced and they cast actors for their characters, and began to film the show at BBC Elstree Centre in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire. Julia Smith thought Eastenders looked ugly written down, and capitalised the second e, the central focus of EastEnders is the fictional Victorian square Albert Square in the fictional London Borough of Walford. In the shows narrative, Albert Square is a 19th-century street, named after Prince Albert, thus, central to Albert Square is The Queen Victoria Public House. Fans have tried to establish the location Walford would have within London if it were real, Walford has the postal district of E20. The postcode district was selected as if it were part of the actual E postcode area covers much of east London although the next unused postcode district in the area was. In 1917 the current postal districts in London were assigned according to the name of the main sorting office for each district. If Walford had been assigned in this scheme it would have been given E17, in March 2011, Royal Mail allocated the E20 postal district to the 2012 Olympic Park. The postal district in EastEnders was entirely fictional up to that point, the shows creators opted for E20 instead of E19 as it was thought to sound better. In September 2011 the postal code for Albert Square was revealed in an episode as E20 6PQ, there is also a market close to Fassett Square at Ridley Road. The postcode for the area, E8, was one of the titles for the series. The name Walford is both a street in Dalston where Tony Holland lived and a blend of Walthamstow and Stratford—the areas of Greater London where the creators were born, other parts of the Square and set interiors are based on other locations. The fictional local newspaper, the Walford Gazette, in local news events such as the arrests or murders of characters appear. EastEnders is built around the idea of relationships and strong families and this theme encompasses the whole Square, making the entire community a family of sorts, prey to upsets and conflict, but pulling together in times of trouble. Co-creator Tony Holland was from a large East End family, Pauline and Petes mother was the domineering Lou Beale, who lived with Pauline and her family
5.
The Firm (EastEnders)
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The Firm is a fictional gangland organisation in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. The Firm owns Strokes wine bar, a front for illegal gambling and it is thought by Mantel that Den, a well-known local publican, will not attract any suspicion to the illegal goings-on at the bar. The Firm is also responsible for a protection racket involving the rival, The Dagmar. When Den wants revenge on Willmot-Brown for raping Kathy Beale, he persuades The Firms Brad Williams to burn the place to the ground and this enrages The Firms bosses, as it draws attention to the illegal gambling going on at Strokes. Den is forced to take the blame for the fire at The Dagmar, the Firm mistakenly believe that Den has informed on them to the police while in prison, and so want him out of the way permanently. They capture him on the way to his trial with the intention of killing him, Den, with Brads help, manages to escape, but is tracked down to the canal by Mantel. A Firm hitman shoots Den with a gun hidden in a bunch of daffodils, the Firm later discover this, and Vinnicombe is killed and his body is dumped in the canal to look like Dens. Vinnicombes body is recovered and, owing to some lazy police work. When Den survived the attempt on his life, Dalton had Vinnicombe murdered, Dalton had taken a young Dennis Rickman under his wing, unaware that Dennis is the son Den Watts never knew he had. Dennis became a professional hardman, and it is in this capacity that he landed himself a prison sentence for grievous bodily harm, Dalton wants Dennis dead, and so orders Phil Mitchell to kill him. Dennis turns the tables on Phil, and persuades him to let him kill Dalton, Phil agrees, and Dennis confronts Dalton, who admits that it was he who had ordered for Den Watts to be killed. Dennis reveals the truth about his parentage to Dalton, before shooting him, daltons last act is to reveal the fact that Den had survived the attempt on his life. News reaches Den Watts in Spain that Dalton is dead, Andy replaces Dalton as the leader of The Firm. This is until Andy loses his position for being a soft touch, Andy is subsequently killed by rival Johnny Allen when Andy tries to double-cross him on a deal. Ironically, Den Watts is finally murdered that night, though at the hands of his wife Chrissie Watts in an unconnected incident. Dennis is murdered in 2005 by Danny Moon, as ordered by Johnny, in 2006, Danny is murdered by his brother Jake Moon, and Johnny dies of a heart attack
