EastEnders ‘has gone the wrong way’, says former show boss

EastEnders has lost its way, according to one of the show's former producers.

Diederick Santer, who produced the show between 2006 and 2010, was behind storylines including Archie's death and Christian and Syed's affair. He said he didn't find the show watchable. "I think that it has not been brilliant in the last few months," he said, according to The Guardian. "I don’t really know what has gone on but I have not found it massively watchable in recent months. But it is cyclical." Now a producer of shows including ITV's Broadchurch, Santer was speaking at a discussion at the Edinburgh Television Festival. He told the festival that the show lacked balance at the moment.

“It always has to walk a line and this is where I think it has gone the wrong way lately. It has to walk the line between social realism and stuff that is exciting, stuff that grips you and makes you gasp – and you have to tune tomorrow to see it. "You don’t want to see it on iPlayer; you want to see it live. Maybe that is what it has lacked just lately, finding a sort of a universality and a scale in those everyday stories."

The show has come under fire from fans in the past year for focusing on younger characters and the slow pace of storylines. Its ratings have fluctuated in recent months - they slumped behind those of Coronation Street and Emmerdale in June and dipped again in July as viewers took issue with the incest storyline between Keanu Taylor and his younger sister Bernadette. Executive producer Sean O'Connor stepped down in June after just 12 months at the helm. He oversaw a period of great change on Albert Square, including the re-casting of Michelle Fowler and the deaths of viewer favourites Roxy and Ronnie Mitchell, as well as storylines that saw Mick cheating on Linda, something many saw as completely out of character.