Today, Digital Spy launches a new fortnightly soaps column Soap Spy, where we'll delve into the storylines and subtexts that have got us glued to our TV sets. In our first edition, Daniel Martin takes a look at EastEnders' compelling new mystery - Who Killed Lucy Beale?
In 1990, cult movie director David Lynch launched an enigmatic TV series about the investigation into the murder of a teenage girl. Its plot twists were almost as random as the ones you find on EastEnders. As secrets tumbled out after the death of Laura Palmer, the residents of Twin Peaks discovered that they never really knew her - or each other - at all.
Twenty-five years on, and BBC One's biggest soap is doing almost exactly the same story, the twist this time being that the Laura Palmer character has been a part of the show for 19 years. And still she was such a non-entity that the device is actually working. In death, Lucy Beale has finally been given something to do. Wikipedia insists that Lucy had an abortion storyline at some point but I'm struggling to remember any of it.
And that has allowed the show's producer and anointed saviour Dominic Treadwell-Collins to fling any number of outlandish character twists her way with total impunity. Everyone accepts that EastEnders is good now. It just feels like a slightly odd way to treat the one female heir to the soap's original Beale-Fowler dynasty, but hey.
In the days leading up to her death, Lucy was exposed as having it (inexplicably) away with Max Branning and being a habitual cokehead. Worse still, she was even seen posing for selfies with her dad, an awkward hat-tip to the zeitgeist second only to the decapitated Barbie dolls that decorate Sharon's hipster cocktail bar. If she hadn't got it on with that fit Carter lad towards the end, then all we'd have to remember Lucy by would be life choices as bad as her business suits.
Her death was initially problematic because of an eerie trailer that depicted characters in unlikely murderous situations (Denise whacking a tarantula with a clawhammer!) to a pained Lana Del Rey tune with the slogan, 'There's a killer amongst them' despite it being flatly obvious that it isn't going to be any of the characters featured, swivelly eyes or no.
What to Read Next
The fortnight of the aftermath was mainly spent watching Ian Beale wildly grieving over a daughter who - as has been pointed out elsewhere - he never even really got on with. Obviously you'd never wish the loss of a child of anyone, but it was exhausting.
Now, even with more extravagant emoting promised from next week's funeral, we're finally getting somewhere with the whodunnit.
The first of presumably many wrongful arrests has been made in the form of Jake Stone. Drafted in on the strength of his success as a mouth-breathing gangster in Hollyoaks, Jamie Lomas has regularly eluded having anything much to do, and his arrest seems designed mainly to get the show its money's worth. It can't be him. We already know Lomas is leaving in a few months, and bosses have intimidatingly promised that this murder won't be solved till February.
Meanwhile, cast members are going round gleefully giving interviews with ludicrous red herring theories. One even suggested that 15 outcomes would be filmed, despite the web-savvy audience being fully aware that soaps claiming they film different endings are always, always lies.
Whither the Hollyoaks quick-reveal.
There's a long way to go. Later this month, another surprising secret about Lucy is revealed as viewers find out the reason for an abusive card left at her funeral (don't be surprised if she's implicated in a people-trafficking ring by July) and Ian Beale's alibi is starting to look increasingly wonky.
So many false leads to get through: making it Ian would be a clear retrofit too far and even if he was capable of filicide, everything we know about him screams that he just wouldn't have the gumption. It seems hugely unlikely we're anywhere near to hitting upon a suspect with a plausible motive.
But never mind that the really exceptional things about EastEnders right now are Anything The Carters Ever Do, the arrival of Mrs Doyle from Father Ted as a right slippery fish - and, of course, Sharon's Barbie Dolls - Lucy's murder is already looking like the most compelling soap mystery of the moment.
It's certainly going to be the longest. And if they can keep Danny Dyer under contract until February, I'll certainly be tuning in to find out who did it. Until then; well as a resident of the East End I'm on the hunt to see if you can now get as good a cup of coffee as Agent Cooper used to rave about in Twin Peaks' Washington State, while trying to work out who is Log Lady. My money's on Cora.
