Keeping it real

I don’t watch EastEnders. Stumbling across it over the years, I’ve got the impression it’s about a community in London who are perpetually furious with each other. I find life tricky enough without filling my down-time with blame and recrimination.

But now, some of that on-screen angst will spill over into real-life boardrooms, because the project to build a fancy new set for the show is 45%, about £27m, over budget, bringing the total cost to nearly £87 million. It’ll be two years late, as well. This made the National Audit Office question whether the project will deliver “value for money”.

I could have helped them with that question at the beginning, but still, it has made me curious.

Apparently, the exterior set they’ve been using since 1984 is just façades, and was only supposed to last for two years. Naturally, I wondered, if it has lasted 34 years, it must be up to the job, so why spend £87 million of taxpayers’ cash to make, as I understand it, actual real brick buildings?

The answer is that the old set can’t be filmed in HD, or High Definition. I’m guessing this is because, with HD, viewers will be able to see the set is fake.

And that would be letting the country down, it would seem, by puncturing people’s illusion that the fake thing they’re watching is real.

Funny times.