Eldorado

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.

In 1992 when Eldorado first aired on the BBC I watched it avidly. Yes, some of the characters seemed a little "outrageous" and maybe some of the acting could have been better. However, I was hooked, especially as we were off to Spain on holiday in the August. Sadly the BBC axed the show, which was a pity.

Three and half years ago, we retired to Spain and now live in a very mixed community of Europeans, ex-pats included. Oh brother! Believe me I have met virtually every character featured in Eldorado, as outrageous as some of them appeared. Whoever researched the program originally did a pretty good job, how sad that it wasn't appreciated at the time. So real is it that our community has now been re-titled Eldorado by our visiting family. Wish the episodes were available on DVD!

Not a bad soap. However, the BBC, in its wisdom, decided to pull the plug when it seemed to be getting off the ground. This decision has always seemed a puzzle when programmes of questionable quality are screened by the same organization. It was sad to lose this programme, and how much public money was thrown away?

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.

Watching recent repeats of Eldorado on cable tv brings back great memories. How many of us looked forward to our twice weekly transportation to the sunshine of Los Barcos? I did. Yes, it had some teething problems. (Tho' looking back, it doesn't seem half as bad as at the time!). And it got better. The storylines and the characters were good, if not always entirely believable. But hey, this is soapland! The Beeb made a big mistake by listening too closely to those telling them that they had a made a big mistake comissioning the programme in the first place, (work that one out!). What say they get back to Los Barcos, pick up where they left off and give us our winter sunshine back?