Tony Holland

Tony Holland (born 1940 in London and died 28 November 2007) was a television writer. He is best known as a writer and co-creator of the BBC soap opera EastEnders.

Early career

His career in television began on the popular police drama, Z-Cars as a writer and script editor. It was here that he met producer and director, Julia Smith and started a long and successful working relationship.

Holland and Smith became an established producer/script-editor team during their time on Z-Cars and went on to work for the BBC's hospital drama, Angels. It was during their time on Angels that the format of the programme was expanded from weekly hour-long episodes to a bi-weekly half-hour serial, with the further possibility of the show being aired all year round.

EastEnders

Main article: History of EastEnders

In 1983 the BBC approached Holland and Smith to produce a new experience for their channel, a bi-weekly soap-opera that would rival the long established ITV favourites, Coronation Street, Crossroads and Emmerdale Farm. The BBC wanted this new serial to reflect "London, today!" and together, Smith and Holland came up with the idea of a programme set in a Victorian Square within the East End of London, focusing on its close working-class families and eccentric Cockney inhabitants. Thus, EastEnders was born.

Holland and Smith wanted a primary focus of EastEnders to be a large extended family, representative of the type most typically found in the East End of London. Holland was from a large London family himself, and in creating some of the show's characters he was able to use some of his own experiences as inspiration for EastEnders central clan the Beales and the Fowlers. In creating the stories and characters, Holland delved into family stories, past and present. His aunt Lou Beale came to inspire the EastEnders character of the same name, along with her two children Peter (Pete) and Pauline. Holland also used some of his experiences as a barman in London's pubs and clubs to create the dynamic pairing of Den and Angie Watts, the owners of the Queen Victoria.

Holland worked on EastEnders for four years, initially as script-editor and going on to script many episodes himself. Thanks to the genius of its two creators, and their inate ability to understand the workings of popular British drama, the show experienced huge success. After four years, Holland and Smith decided to call it a day, leaving EastEnders together in 1989. In 1991, they were famously tempted back to the 'world of Soap' by the BBC to produce Eldorado, loosely based around the lives of ex-pats in Spain. Their new show was launched in July 1992, but plagued by a string on and off-screen problems, it received little of EastEnders immense success, and was subsequently axed a year later, in July 1993.

Since the failure of Eldorado and the death of his working-partner Julia Smith in 1997, Holland had all but disappeared from the writing credits of popular British drama, contributing mainly to television-serials overseas.

In 2002, he was awarded with a Special Achievement Award from the British Soap Awards, and in 2004 he appeared on the Channel 4 documentary How Soaps Changed The World.

Holland passed away in hospital on 28 November 2007 after a long illness. ). The 29th November 2007 edition of EastEnders was dedicated to him.

External links

• Tony Holland at IMDb