EastEnders: TV Craft Special Award 2025

Words by Jennifer Jasmine White.

Celebrated for its commitment to nurturing new behind-the-camera talent, EastEnders’ has received a BAFTA Special Award. The award recognises the sheer social impact of one of the most-watched genres of the small screen: the continuing drama, or the Great British soap.

Emerging from the same cultural moment as a ‘New Wave’ of British social realism, soap opera has outlived many other dramatic forms and yet still finds itself frequently overlooked. Connecting with the lives of millions of working people week after week, shaping public consensus, and offering audiences a rare chance to see their own lives reflected attentively and complexly, those individuals at the centre of the soap world know the value of what they do. Met with a UK media that often oversimplifies and caricatures their lives, working-class people have long known that value, too.

Much of what should be celebrated about the world of soaps extends far beyond the immediately visible. It is, for instance, one of the few forms that has given voice to the complexities of working-class women’s lives. And, by no coincidence, one of the only ones to prioritise those same women on the other side of the camera. Where this is celebrated, it is often simply as an origin story, but trailblazers such as Kay Mellor and Sally Wainwright ought not be taken as exceptions, but rather proof of the kinds of talent that abounds on sets such as these.

When it comes to the 40-year lifespan of EastEnders, the show has enabled the development of many of the film and TV industry’s top behind-the-camera talents. Directors such as Justin Chadwick, Tom Hooper, Rebecca Gatward, Menhaj Huda, Dearbhla Walsh, among others, have all cut their teeth on the show. While, other names include writers Sarah Phelps and Ashley Pharaoh, costume designer Yves Barre and sound supervisor Tudor Davies.

Such environments need not be thought of as an entry point to surpass, however, but as an unmatched guarantor of quality and experience. Rona McKendrick, senior production manager on EastEnders, sees the show as “the bedrock in the industry of people who have cut their teeth on TV. They’ve started with us, they often come back to us.” Though it might not chime with dominant narratives about taste and mobility in Britain, these programmes hold onto as much talent as they wave farewell to.

In 2015, EastEnders began its participation in the BBC’s Continuing New Directors’ Training Scheme. By 2021, it also demonstrated its commitment to address the chronic underrepresentation of talent from minority groups in the field of directing, by partnering with Directors UK on the Diversity Director Training Scheme. These, among initiatives such as the Multi-Camera Directing Course, Writers’ Studio, and Ascend Workshops (all launched in the past year) are vital for formalising and expanding upon practices long exhibited in the world of continuing drama. More than this, they also hold that world accountable. “We need a whole spectrum of creativity, perspectives and voices to make the show consistently fresh and exciting,” says Kate Oates, head of drama productions at BBC Studios. “It ensures that we are [both] reflective of society and those watching at home.”

The fresh voices that such schemes bring in are also the voices that work to remind us there is still a way to go. They also offer a practical solution to those in the industry wondering how they can do more. Looking towards initiatives such as these is to see some practical routes to change.

We know the social value of schemes such as these – they are, incontrovertibly, good things, providing access and insight to those whose material circumstance might otherwise exclude them. Yet that social value cannot be separated from an aesthetic one. The championing of diverse voices at every level of production is as much an act of creative need as it is of social good. The recognisability of these much-loved onscreen worlds depends on a tightly focused creative team that, crucially, know exactly the intricacies of the world they’re trying to replicate. This kind of detail matters on every level: from the clothes characters wear to the kind of mugs they have in their kitchen cupboards; the way they speak and how the camera frames them.

Working-class creatives can do more than soap opera. But, soap opera depends on working-class creatives, without whom the storytelling quickly fractures into caricatures and simplified projections. In other words, inclusive hiring practices are central to the aesthetic and political project that is soap. They are central to the meticulous creation of the meaningfully real.

Initiatives such as the behind-the-camera talent schemes of EastEnders are above all a matter of integrity in craft. In celebrating them, we might recognise British soap as the trailblazing site of innovation that it has, in reality, long been. Far from just offering tokenistic representation, it is a form which creatively reflects, archives and transforms British social life.

A BAFTA Special Award is one of the academy’s highest honours recognising an outstanding contribution to film, games or television. You can see more award winners in our Awards database.

For more inspiring stories from the world of film, games and TV explore our BAFTA Award Stories.