Yes, I know she’s a national institution and June Brown plays her like a dream, but was last night’s Dot Cotton extravaganza really that great? Or even necessary? This was undoubtedly a classy episode of EastEnders (BBC One), featuring just her, a tape machine and a whole lotta misery. Quite rightly, the producers want to eke as much gold out of the character and actress as possible: both are fantastic. But this was much-loved character overkill.
The plaudits for Tony Jordan’s script and Brown’s performance will be many and generous. When a soap strays out of its comfort zone, when a character is unpeeled and the acting aspires to higher levels than the usual slap-threat crescendos, the inference is clear. “We are not just a soap,” such episodes scream, “we are a valid dramatic enterprise.” Beat that, Alan Bennett, with yer Talking Heads malarkey!
EastEnders was the first soap to tinker with the genre’s format, first with the half-episode between Michelle and Den in which she revealed he was the father of her unborn baby. Dot herself has already had a two-hander with her best friend Ethel. A few years ago, Dot’s Story revealed her backstory as a child evacuee in rural Wales. Last night’s was the first episode of any soap to feature just one character. And you can see why: Dot is not everyday. The hair, the fag, the overcoat, the strangulated voice – she’s a soap icon; the only surviving EastEnders icon of times past.
We were set for a long, dark night of the soul, in which Dot recorded a message to husband Jim, who is in hospital having suffered a stroke (John Bardon, who plays him, is also recovering from the same thing). The episode began with Dot looking at happy couples leaving the Vic – an unusual sight, extras obviously – and bolting her front door. She said she wasn’t much of a talker (disingenuous when you consider the amount of gossip she’s circulated) and found it difficult to talk to a machine. She was orbiting a difficult subject – whether to care for Jim at home or entrust him to fulltime medical care – but, before she got there, started talking about her childhood and about being starved of love throughout her life.
Ethel loomed large: Dot confessed to being horrified by and enchanted with her. Here Tony Jordan’s script worked best, steeped in wicked detail, as Dot remembered her outrageous, much-missed friend showing off “next week’s washing” while singing Roll Out the Barrel“like a navvy”. Brown’s voice crackled with loss, sadness and anger that was tremendously affecting. “I feel cold,” she said. And so did we. This became a lament for loneliness and isolation: Jim had shown her briefly that she could be happy. So had dear uncle Will and auntie Gwen, with whom she lived in Wales during the war: she had lain down in fields and drank water from streams so cold, “it ’urt my ’ead”. She told Jim she couldn’t take care of him, it would be too much: him being there “and not being there”, concluding “I’m better on my own”.
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This was a tour de force for sure – but an indulgent one. It didn’t unlock anything substantially new to Dot. Her decision not to care for Jim was the only thing that kept the story progressing forward, but it seemed unconnected to the preceding confessional. Lots of things for long-term Dot-watchers didn’t make sense: her much-quoted Bible barely figured and wouldn’t her Christian beliefs have heavily influenced any decision to care or not care for Jim? Wouldn’t her faith intersect intriguingly with her feelings of loss?
Far from making us care more about Dot – we do anyway, it was preaching to the converted – it was a little, well, dull. Boring even. The producers should be investing more time in making us care about the new characters they’ve bought in, such as the Asian family, currently struggling under the curse of the Ferreiras – “Let’s write in some people of colour; errrr, what do we do with them?” Old characters are returning, such as Ricky and Bianca, but the episode revealed a nagging weakness: Coronation Street has a fine repertory of older characters and actors which gives the show its wonderful link to the past. In EastEnders, the same gatekeeping roles are played by Dot and Ian Beale: she is a jewel but, as she said, an all-too lonely one. Cherish her, absolutely, but don’t turn her into a drag act.
Out of the box
— Is anyone else seething with frustration at the scheduling clash of Damages and Curb Your Enthusiasm, both going out at 10.35pm on Monday nights? Please sort it out. I know they’re both repeated, but not at great times. Could Damages people talk to Curb people. Or I’ll send round Glenn Close and Larry David (sorry, Anonymous).
— Coleen’s Real Women (ITV2) featured Coleen McLoughlin, Wayne Rooney’s fianc?e, trying to find “normal” women to front advertising campaigns. Coleen kept reminding us how “normal” and “ordinary” she was, which was rubbish – she’s famous and pretty. If she wanted the women to be “happy with who you are”, as she kept repeating like a computerised doll, why were they all primped, styled and made over? tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk