LIKE Dirty Den before her and possibly Mick Carter after, Cindy Beale has risen from the dead on EastEnders.
Officially, of course, she died during childbirth in 1998.
Cindy Beale has risen from the dead on EastEnders
Since her supposed death, Cindy’s been living in style with Ian Beale
Turns out, though, she’s actually just been living in witness protection, under the assumed name Rose Knight, all these years.
Or she was until her Met handler arrived in France last week to tell Cindy the threat to her had now passed away and: “Your programme’s over.”
Words the actress Michelle Collins must have heard her agent mumble dozens of times, what with Hotel Babylon, Sun Trap, Rock Rivals and all the rest of those clunkers.
In fact, it’s probably the reason she’s come to this sorry pass, which required a tortured, 40-minute special to try and explain the entirely inexplicable.
Murder capital
Apparently, though, Cindy’s been living in extraordinary style, with Ian Beale, at a Normandy mansion that was funded entirely from flogging “three baguettes for six Euros” to gormless Frogs at the local market.
It’s not just those two either, there’s also a grandchild and Lauren Branning, who looked her partner straight in the face during this episode and said: “You’re never going to change. You’re still the same old Peter Beale.”
A harsh judgment, given that Peter’s had seven different heads and they’ve suddenly reverted to the fifth version, played by Thomas Law, who looks a foot shorter than his predecessor, Dayle Hudson.
If all this wasn’t implausible enough, Ian Beale then had a heart attack, Cindy discovered her ex, George, was now running the Queen Vic and immediately decided to chuck in the baguettes and move back to the murder capital of British soap operas.
There’s not a real-life Cockney in the world who’d have made that call, but what seismic changes can she expect to find in Walford?
On the face of it, almost none.
They may have different names, but it’s still just the same characters (Linda Carter = Angie Watts) being tormented by the same half- dozen storylines in an endless, issue-driven loop of snarling and shouting.
Underneath the usual miserable facade, though, there’s a real undercurrent of weirdness about EastEnders these days that goes way beyond the fact there are now 12 ex-Strictly Come Dancing contestants all living within 30 metres of each other.
For starters, Cindy isn’t the only member of the living dead roaming the Square.
Kathy’s also back, despite having died in 2006, and we had an April visit, in ghost form, from Roxy Mitchell, who was seeking advice from her daughter Amy, who somehow resisted the urge to shout: “DON’T DO PANTO IN CRAWLEY!”
Then there are the random characters.
Recent additions have included Reiss’s wife Debbie, who hovers between life and death in a persistent vegetative state, Rocky’s talking parrot Jasper, who deserves the Best Newcomer gong at next year’s Soap Awards, and a left-wing naturist called Jed, who stomped around Sonia’s flat for a couple of weeks barking “clothes are a capitalist conspiracy” and is probably now the BBC’s Head of News.
The weirdest thing of the lot, though, was definitely February’s “flash forward” episode, where we saw six women standing around a man’s body at Christmas 2023.
It was hailed at the time as a ground-breaking way of doing a whodunnit, but to me it just looked more like a frantic plea to “please keep watching . . . we beg you”.
For it cannot have escaped anyone’s notice, no matter how hard they spin the iPlayer figures, the glory days of 30million viewers are long gone and its biggest asset, Danny Dyer, even quit the show partly because they’d regularly fallen to just 2.5million.
Frankly, it’s impossible to blame the missing 27.5million.
If the overwhelming misery doesn’t do the trick, you’ll be wiped out by the sheer smugness of the show which believes, at the same time as bringing old characters back from the dead, it can reduce us to sobbing wrecks by killing off the new ones.
So, no sooner had Cindy Beale risen, than they were burying Lola, with full soap honours, a changed theme tune (Forever Young) and her grief-stricken husband Jay wailing: “I just want her back. I just want her back.”
Then stick around 20 years, son. Believe me, she’ll come.
Officially, Cindy died during childbirth in 1998
Cindy has actually been living in witness protection, under the assumed name Rose Knight
Load of Goggle-degook
WITH Fred and Rose West unavailable, Channel 4 has had to seek slightly more conventional horrors to appal the viewers of Celebrity Gogglebox these past two weeks.
Not the way the network sees it, I grant you.
Alastair and Grace Campbell are just some of the unpleasant TV stars shoe-horned onto the newest series of Celebrity Gogglebox
Executives will almost certainly think they’ve filled the screens with long-established and emerging national treasures, which probably helps explain why Channel 4 is currently in a state of financial meltdown.
For the rest of us, though, the grim reality is: King of smug Chris Packham wishing genocide on the entire human race because a cookery show has annoyed him.
Clare Balding finding sexism lurking in even the most innocent 1% Club question.
And toxic playground bully Alastair Campbell, plus his equally unpleasant daughter Grace, failing to get a four-letter word out of Countdown’s NRNOEOTSA, when every single viewer would’ve been screaming “ARSE” at the pair of them.
Admittedly, Shaun Ryder and Bez are also present to lighten the load, as is Jane McDonald’s mate Sue, who’s naturally funnier than nearly all of the show’s professional comedians.
Any good, however, is immediately cancelled out by Ricky Tomlinson trying to play the worker’s card while sat in a sumptuous Cheshire mansion, in front of a grand piano, with a bowl of strawberries, watching Trooping The Colour.
“It seems a bit over the top, considering we’re all skint.”
All skint, my arse.
TV Gold
BBC2’s Parole, the best show currently on TV, always delivering a brutal sting in the tail.
Paul Whitehouse managing to wrench a couple of laughs out of Channel 4’s menopause comedy The Change (Surly Valentine).
Elton John tore it up at Glastonbury on Sunday
Paul McCartney was in attendance for Elton’s historic gig
The joy of the crowd and the frozen expression of Paul McCartney letting you know exactly how brilliantly Elton John was tearing it up at Glastonbury on Sunday.
And the only two people you actually need on Celebrity Gogglebox discussing Gino D’Acampo’s bolognese sauce.
Shaun Ryder: “When I drink Italian red wine I see dead people. I once saw a Cyclops.”
Long thoughtful pause. Bez: “I’d stay off that red wine if I were you.”
A load of tatt
ON the final episode of BBC2’s grindingly woke Africa Rising series, Wimbledon-raised and Oxbridge-educated host Afua Hirsch, announced she was going to get a tattoo, in Soweto, to remind her of her background.
Two crossed tennis racquets over a bottle of Robinsons Barley Water?
Wimbledon-raised and Oxbridge-educated Afua Hirsch announced she was going to get a tattoo to remind her of her background
Her private school’s Latin motto?
An ivory bleeding tower, flying the Union Jack, right across her back?
No.
“A Ghanaian Nsoromma symbol meaning child of the heavens,” obviously.
The struggle is real, kids.
Lookalike of the week
Ken Bruce and Dr Bunsen Honeydew are the lookalikes of this week
THIS week’s winner is More 4’s very fine PopMaster host Ken Bruce and Dr Bunsen Honeydew from The Muppets.
Sent in by Butchie Burkett, from Millwall.
Great sporting insights
MARTIN Keown: “I’ve lost count of the number of managers Southampton have had. It’s four.”
Martin Keown: “Pep’s saying, ‘Show me the hunger you haven’t got’.”
Rob Earnshaw: “It’s still nil-nil to Wales.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Chase: Celebrity Special, Bradley Walsh: “In 2019 which boxer beat Andy Ruiz Jnr to reclaim his world heavyweight titles?”
Hollie Arnold: “AJ Pritchard.”
Bradley Walsh: “Who presents the podcast, ‘Heston’s Journey To The Centre of Food’?”
Andrew Pierce: “Pass.”
Tenable, Warwick Davis: “I’m looking for a UK city that contains the letter G?”
Natalie: “Belfast.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “On a standard watch face what number is directly opposite 12?”
Simon: “Zero.”
Random TV irritations
THE Repair Shop’s cult of the NHS special perpetuating the myth it’s “the best in the world”, when the outdated wreck isn’t even in the world’s top ten health services.
Catherine Tate’s Queen Of Oz disaster already looking unbeatable in the packed race to be declared Worst Sitcom Of The Decade.
Chase contestants telling thick people, “We need you back here”. (You don’t.)
And ITV’s Van der Valk taking Amsterdam, the world’s most famously free and easy city, and turning it into a preachy, uptight, woke hell-hole.
Nice work, morons.
