Eldorado

This series should have done better, it could have done better, but was never given the chance. It was a soap based around British ex-pats that had found a haven and mixed with the locals. The storylines were ok, but some of the early acting was poor, but as time went on the production changed beyond recognition. However, after all the effort the cast and crew put into the series, the BBC bosses pulled the plug and watched £10million pounds waste away instead of trying to help it out. Viewing figures were up and the series was selling well around Europe, but all there is left now is an empty studio village and repeats. Nothing more...

With the terrible reviews and screaming front-page headlines it got at the time Eldorado didn't stand a chance. The series was launched in too much of a hurry with too great a fanfare, leading to very high hopes for its fairly poor first episodes. After a little while, with a few of the huge cast removed and a more definite sense of direction, Eldorado became the best soap on British TV. But the damage was done, and it never really gained the place in public affections that it needed. The Beeb pulled the plug after a year.

Eldorado, by the time it finished, was absolutely unique. It had found its place in the world, and knew its direction. It was expending a lot of energy exploring the nature of people who leave their motherland and o to live in the sun. So much was revealed about the true nature of ex-pats, and some characters who seemed a bit faceless at the beginning were revealed as far more complex once they were given a bit of screen time to themselves. In Freddie Martin, Eldorado gave us one of TV's greatest gay characters: his reunion with his longlost daughter, Natalie, and his silent grief at the death of his secret boyfriend, Javier, were immaculately written and performed.

Eldorado was able to give great depth and involvement to the idea of culture clash, and to highlight what life in the "new" Europe was really like (boo-hiss baddie Marcus Tandy calls German Dieter "Adolf" at one point). There were characters and relationships never seen on TV, before or since (the Leducs' open marriage, modern Spanish women breaking away from traditional Catholic families, gay parents), and plenty of imagination given to thoroughly original storylines.

After the dodgy beginning, Eldorado became the most unique TV show that the BBC had ever tried. Ten years on, I still think it's a shame they didn't have the confidence to carry it through. Mind you, the last episode was a corker.

When in 1992 the BBC decided it needed a second soap to relieve the burden on 'Eastenders' to be the networks solo rival to ITV'S 'Coronation Street' and 'Emmerdale' the novel idea of setting it in the sunnier climes of Spain amongst British ex-pats seemed to give the show a unique selling point. Many shows come and go but the fatal blow to this soap opera may have been the original fanfare with which it was launched. The BBC spent £10,000,000 on preliminary sets and production but upon first glance the hugely anticipated drama seemed to have little in the way of story lines or characterisation. There were production problems with the sound that made the show at times impossible to watch.

The hype that the show had been given and the fact that it was funded by the licence payer meant that the British press leapt upon it and it became a favourite object of derision. Initially encouraging viewing figures tumbled to only 3 million per episode and ten months after its fanfare debut the BBC pulled the plug and cancelled the show.

It is well known that the quality of the show and the viewing figures were climbing towards and the end and that perhaps the show was finally starting to catch on. However, the damage had long been done. The media had slated it and tainted it as a joke and from this there was no return for the BBC. The massively expensive sets were mothballed and are now a museum for intrepid tourists and curious TV fans. The shown came to an end satisfactorily and somewhat gracefully (for otherwise see Crossroads #3) but one can only imagine how devastating it was for the actors (other victims of the shows bad initial production) and we can only estimate how much money was poured down the drain on the massively hyped and massively expensive white elephant.

Like Crossroads and Triangle, Eldorado became a byword in the 90s for bad TV programmes. In a way particularly early on this is probably true. The first episodes of the show were not good. A lot of the cast were inexperienced actors (or indeed non actors before this show) and there were issues with sound and video quality as they were shooting in real physical buildings and not indoor sets built inside a studio. This meant everything echoed a lot and quite often the lighting was a bit dark. As a British soap, albeit set and shot in Spain they also had the strange idea of the foreign characters speaking in their native language. Realistic - yes, but difficult for a show going out in an English speaking country, particularly as these bits of dialogue were also not subtitled!

Some of the early storylines were fairly awful to watch. That in particular of middle aged Bunny Charleson coming back to Spain with his 17 year old wife Fizz - it was just uncomfortable! Poor Kathy Pitkin who played Fizz bore the brunt of a lot of the criticism from the British press. True, she wasn't the best actress, but looking at it now she's no worse than a lot of current young British soap stars and given more of a chance I think she would have grown into the role and improved. Its very telling Eldorado is her one and only acting credit to this day.

As ratings went down and vitriol from the press continued the producer left and the replacement immediately set about removing many of the poorer actors, stopping the foreign language sections, rounding out characters better, adding better storylines and improving production techniques. These actions vastly improved the show and ratings began to go up.

The favourite and probably best characters and storylines came from those of playboy Marcus Tandy (with his enormous mobile phone and Renault Alpine) and his girlfriend, runaway stable hand Pilar. Washed up club singer Trish (Polly Perkins) and her good friend bar owner Joy had great chemistry and also got some quite dramatic and dark storylines for a 7pm soap opera.

For completeness of soap character archetypes you had the seemingly "cosy" Lockhead family, nosy neighbour Olive King, the very sophisticated Leduc family where the parents had their open marriage, as well as an actual Spanish family who had a few secrets of their own, including a very well done gay relationship storyline which was handled quite sensitively and was unusual for UK TV at the time.

Unfortunately all the improvements couldn't save the show as new BBC One director Alan Yentob made axing the show his first task in his then new role. The final episode sailed out into the sunset quite literally almost a year to the day the first episode was shown.

Looking back, yes the show had its problems early on but they were well on the way to being fixed, and towards the end Eldorado was getting what these days would be considered extremely healthy ratings - up to 10 million. I wonder if almost 30 years on if things had been different and the show had continued what would it be like now? I guess we will never know. I was a teenager when it was first on, and am now in my 40s. I enjoyed it then, and having re-watched it more recently I still enjoy it.

I was never a fan of Eldorado but I can remember the blaze of publicity and hype that greeted the Beeb's flagship soap opera - Sean Connery, apparently, at one point, provided the voiceover (this was untrue).

Although it had a better hook than ITV's miserable 'Albion Market', Eldorado was beset by a legion of problems - technical, legal, logistical, administrative and financial - that overwhelmed an overstretched and vaguely defined production. Crucially, it had no central character - no Bet, Den, Charlene or even a Mandy for the viewer to root for.

The BBC were probably right to bring the axe down on an expensive, woodenly acted, muddled white elephant but as Britain totters towards a new phase in our fraught relationship with Europe it makes you wonder what storylines we would be watching today if Eldorado had managed to thrive and survive.