Madeleine McCann Fact And Fiction: EastEnders Sorts It Out
MADELEINE McCann continues to attract media coverage.
The theft of Madeleine McCann has always been a single thread story. Remove the speculation and it is the story of one girl’s disappearance.
But it is real. The story is “every parent’s worst nightmare”. Parents watch the McCanns with pity, sorrow and anger. Footballers appeal for help. MPs wear yellow ribbons and Gordon Brown has tears in his eyes.
But the story is running out of steam. Only one tabloid paper, the Sun, makes any mention of Madeleine McCann on its front page. And it does so to tell us: “ENDERS CANCEL MADDIE PLOT.”
Readers will recall a similar move by Coronation Street. That soap opera was to feature a plot in which Claire Peacock’s baby Freddie was abducted.
A spokesman for the show explained: “We are aware that there are some similarities in future storylines to the events surrounding the disappearance if Madeleine McCann. We would not wish to add to the family’s anguish at this terrible time.”
The show wanted to tell us how it understood the power of soap opera fiction and what it could do to the McCanns. The McCanns had lost their daughter and could surely not cope with the hammer blow of a soap opera storyline. The plot was shelved. The McCanns would not be made to endure further ordeal, providing Corrie is even broadcast in Portugal and that the parents of a missing girl are watching anything but the rolling news.
Coronation Street was doing it bit to show how much it cared.
And now EastEnders does the same. In the show, Dawn Swann was to have had her newborn baby taken by the wife of the baby’s father. Wife had paid mother to have the child and than found to her great horror that surrogate and husband had been having an illicit affair in hotel rooms after mother had been hired to pretend to be another man’s wife.
Indeed, the similarities between this plot and the McCanns ordeal cannot be overstated.
So EastEnders will settle back to its key plot drivers - “Sort it”, “You’re a Mitchell!” and “It’s all about family!” and Ian Beale’s beige jacket.
An EastEnders spokeswoman tells the Sun: “It was felt any storyline that included a child abduction was inappropriate and could cause distress.”
If the show is now sensitive to the real world, can EastEnders see fit to stop any stories involving fighting, guns and shootings, murder, rapes and all love interest stories involving Phil Mitchell lest they cause a dip in the national birth rate.
Oh, and get the writers to make it so that Madeleine McCann is found alive and well…
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:32 pm
There are cases such as the McCann debacle all the time.
Again -
Why is this one child being treated differently form every other case?
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
BBC Radio 4 want to talk to you as soon as possible
call 0208 624 9730
May 23rd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Would they have pulled this storyline if the story had not made the type of headline news that it has? I doubt it.
Any caring that is claimed is hollow when this is taken into account. If they cared about the parents in a situation like this they would pull these storylines whenever a similar situation occurred and not only when it was in the media spotlight.
It can therefore only be assumed that they are only interested in how they are perceived rather than how the McCann family might feel about it.
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:00 pm
[...] - Madeleine McCann Fact And Fictio .. [...]
May 23rd, 2007 at 6:47 pm
isn’t it a sad reflection of today’s viewing public that the content of a soap is in some way deemed to reflect real life?
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Soaps are nothing but but junk food for the mind. Spoonfed nonsense. I agree with ‘The Usual suspect’ when he says ‘any caring..is hollow’.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:28 pm
the thing is, there are cases similar to this happening all the time in the UK.
As such, there would be NO time to run a storyline such as this going by the BBC’s wish not to offend any family members (unless of course they are unfortunate not to have a host of celebrities pleading for the return of the child, or mates with money, or a website, or from a middle class family etc etc…….)
May 24th, 2007 at 9:57 am
It could be understood had the storyline started when Maddy first went missing, such as they postpone aircrash movies if there has been an aircrash in life.
But in real life there is birth- death and all factors in between, and don’t these soaps in particular reflect on that?
Whilst its a nasty fact that Maddy is still missing so are many other children and all of them unsung heroes, and this includes their nameless parents
June Johnson
May 26th, 2007 at 3:00 am
Why are these despicable and irresponsible parents, the McCanns, being treated with kid gloves? None of their everchanging stories add up.
May 26th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
could one expand upon “none of their everchanging stories add up”?
September 4th, 2007 at 11:00 am
[...] May I’M on Radio 4 in a moment, talking about Madeleine McCann and EastEnders. Who knew those two things were related? Tune in… Listen here: pm_show.mp3Share This [...]
September 19th, 2007 at 10:03 am
[...] readers will realise that this is not the first time fiction has impacted upon fact. Back in May, EastEnders shelved one of it plots. In the show, Dawn Swann was to have had her newborn baby taken by the wife of the baby’s father. [...]
December 8th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
“Indeed, the similarities between this plot and the McCanns ordeal cannot be overstated.” Anorak, what exactly do you mean by this statement and the paragraph above it?
December 8th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Liz - it’s sarcasm…
December 8th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
what i dont understand -
the mccanns state they want to be absolved in order for the the world to continue the search for madeleine…..i was unaware that the search had stopped…according to metodo 3 they were about to discover their daughter!
thats ALL they keep saying - stop pointing the finger at them so the search can continue!! it makes no bloody sense - they cant even think of a good spin anymore.
December 8th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Oh, stuff it! Are we never to have a good kidnapping plot on TV ever again? Should we ban RL Stevenson’s “Kidnapped” from our libraries?
What rubbish!
December 9th, 2007 at 4:13 am
LOL! Thank you, Anorak, I was beginning to wonder what the heck next are we going to hear? Surely every possible scenario has been covered by now! I pray every day for Madeleine and her family. God bless them in their sorrow.
December 9th, 2007 at 11:43 am
Remember Ben Needham
December 10th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Funny, that word ‘absolved’, anna - rather implies guilt and confession first, which the McCanns could try any day.
Also funny is the way that Clarence keeps on insisting that ’someone knows what happened, why don’t they say something?’
Any semi-intelligent rational person would have doubts about the parents’ involvement. Is Clarence Mitchell a semi-intelligent rational person?
Only in his dreams, I suppose.