E Street is an Australian television soap opera created by Forrest Redlich and produced by his production company, Westside Television Productions, for Network Ten. It was broadcast twice weekly, from Wednesday, 24 January 1989 to Thursday, 20 May 1993. The series won several Logie Awards.Albert Moran and Chris Keating, The A to Z of Australian Radio and Television Scarecrow Press, 2009. (pp. 149–150)
E Street is short for Eden Street, which is based in a tough fictional inner-city district called Westside. The action of the soap opera revolves around the local community.
The soap opera Richmond Hill, which was produced by the Grundy Organisation, was cancelled by Network Ten to make way for E Street. E Street initially rated poorly in Australia, but early audience research indicated that it had attracted both a significant proportion of the 14–35 audience demographic and a large male viewership. After a radical overhaul of the show, revised storylines and updated characters targeting the niche demographics, the ratings steadily climbed.
E Street ran for 404 episodes, each one hour long. Like many Australian soap operas before it, E Street was broadcast as two one-hour episodes each week and until the premiere of HeadLand in November 2005, it had been the last Australian soap opera to screen its episodes in this format. In the U.K., E Street aired as edited half-hour episodes, stripped 5 days a week.
About E Street
Beginnings E Street was created and produced by Forrest Redlich. The structure of the original cast and the format of the first episodes were modelled on A Country Practice, a highly successful serial on Seven Network that both Redlich and producer Bruce Best had worked on for several years until 1988. The earliest episodes of E Street could be seen as an urban version of that soap, tackling human interest, issue-led stories over two weekly hour-long episodes, with continuing storylines carried by the small regular ensemble cast.Andrew Mercado, Super Aussie Soaps Pluto Press Australia, 2004. (pp. 34–35) Further similarities included setting much of the action around the local police station, a pub, and a doctor's surgery with the regular cast established as working at one of these locations. While in rural A Country Practice, a veterinary practice was featured regularly, in suburban E Street, this was replaced with a legal aid centre.
A more obvious comparison with A Country Practice was the addition of actress Penny Cook as E Streets leading, anchor character, Doctor Elly Fielding. Cook had previously had a popular run as veterinarian Vicky Dean in A Country Practice from the series inception in 1981 through to 1985. After a break of over two years, it was announced in late 1988 that Cook would be returning to television in E Street.Andrew Mercado, Super Aussie Soaps Pluto Press Australia, 2004. (pp.287) Elly is a single mother to young tomboy Claire (Brooke Mikey Anderson), and they lived in the flat above Elly's surgery. Also, Claire's father and Elly's ex-husband, Dr David Fielding (Noel Hodda), a celebrity TV doctor, would occasionally appear in early episodes, usually to stir up trouble for Elly.
Another stand-out member of the original cast was Tony Martin as the hip and trendy Reverend Bob Brown. His blossoming relationship with Dr Elly spanned much of the entire run of the series. Other regulars from the beginning included the widowed publican Ernie Patchett (Vic Rooney), and his teenage son, Chris (Paul Kelman), who ran Patchett's Pacific pub, a central location seen in virtually every episode of the series. Chris was best friends with the pub's feisty barmaid, Lisa Bennett, played by Alyssa-Jane Cook, who became one of the soap's most popular stars. Soap veterans Leslie Dayman as police sergeant George Sullivan, and Cecily Polson as district nurse Martha O'Dare, enhanced the community feel of Westside.Andrew Mercado, Super Aussie Soaps Pluto Press Australia, 2004. (pp. 287)
The two remaining original characters – Rhonda Berry (Melanie Salomon), arrived in the first episode to join her husband, police constable Paul Berry (Warren Jones), who was already settled in Westside, and Sarah McKillop, (Katrina Sedgwick), arrived to take over the legal aid centre in the second episode – were both newcomers, and outsiders, to Eden Street when it all began. Viewers would be introduced to life on E Street loosely through the eyes of Sarah and Rhonda, with brash and bolshi Sarah disrupting life on the street with her progressive ideas on legal matters, while shy and slightly ditzy Rhonda, who had moved from Ballina, New South Wales, to Westside, struggled to adjust to her new life in the city with Paul. Sarah and Rhonda became unlikely good friends, bonded by their experiences in getting to know the initially hostile and tight-knit community. It would be through Sarah's various legal cases at the legal aid centre working with Reverend Bob, and Rhonda's new job as Elly's Receptionist at the doctor's surgery working with Martha – as well as Paul's work at the police station with George – that many of the series' original moralistic storylines emerged.Andrew Mercado, Super Aussie Soaps Pluto Press Australia, 2004. (pp. 288–289)
There was a significant amount of location work, and the (then) gritty areas of Rozelle and Balmain in Sydney, were used for all of the establishing shots of Westside and the backdrop for outside filming, a key location being The Pacific Hotel which doubled as Patchett's Pacific for the entire run of the series.The Best of Mr Bad Part 2 DVD. 2007. Umbrella Entertainment. Audio commentary on episode 288 from Creator Forrest Redlich
The first episodes of E Street aired in January 1989. After the much-publicised launch and following generally positive critical reviews, E Street did not perform well in Australian ratings.Andrew Mercado, Super Aussie Soaps Pluto Press Australia, 2004. (pp. 288) The opening episodes were seen as left-wing and relentlessly uncompromising in their approach to difficult and taboo subjects; for example, the second episode of E Street included a story arc about a young woman with severe learning difficulties who becomes pregnant after implied sexual abuse by a gang of young men.Mr Bad's Revenge DVD. 2007 Umbrella Entertainment. Audio commentary on episode 288 makes reference to the series initially being specifically "left-wing" and hard-hitting The subjects of rape, coercion and the legalities of forced abortion are all explored, and then abruptly conclude with the woman attempting to commit suicide and losing her unborn baby. A couple of weeks later, a four-episode story arc commenced which followed a ten-year-old boy who finds his mother dead from an overdose of valium in their crumbling bedsit. He goes to live with a foster family, but the boy accuses his foster father of sexual abuse. Homelessness, child abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, incest, disability, alcoholism, drug addiction, armed robbery, and illegal immigration are all covered explicitly in early episodes, but these often grim and socially conscious storylines were interspersed with lighter scenes, such as Rhonda and Sarah's cocktail party, Elly and Bob's slowly developing romance, and Rhonda unknowingly purchasing bedroom furniture from a porn baron. This gave the series a rather uneasy balance of crime and heavy drama mixed with lightweight soap opera and slapstick comedy.
After three months following the original format of gritty, hard-hitting storylines, extremely poor ratings proved that this approach was not working. The series was churning through storylines at such a fast pace that it was hard for viewers to keep up. Characters were introduced through the most tenuous of links with the regulars, but then disappeared at the end of their storyline, often with open-ended or unsatisfactory conclusions. The reliance on guest characters created a lack of continuity, very few cliffhangers, and little for viewers to come back for. The peripheral regular cast were given very little to do except support the guest characters who came in, played out, and then concluded their story arc, which made the regular characters seem two-dimensional. The serialized soap-drama hybrid which made A Country Practice so successful was underpinned by the strong support cast involved in their own ongoing dramas and this was evidently missing in the very early episodes of E Street. Redlich and series producer Denis Phelan recognised these shortcomings early on and immediately began to make radical changes to every aspect of the fledgling series. Redlich commented at the time:
New Direction
After six months, starting at episode 39, E Street underwent its first major on-screen revamp.Andrew Mercado, Super Aussie Soaps Pluto Press Australia, 2004. (pp.288) Initially, the preachy social commentary storylines were softened and gradually replaced by an increase in comedy and upbeat plots. Episode titles were dropped, and the two-episode, guest storyline of the week strand was replaced with a conventional serialised soap-opera format with the storylines now predominantly focused on the contract cast. Although still covering a range of hard-hitting issues, such as Lisa's traumatic rape ordeal, there began a colourful and interesting influx of new characters who were introduced to expand the small existing cast. Furthermore, the costumes became distinctive and fashionable and the music soundtrack was completely overhauled to include current hits and showcase new musical talent. All of these changes were part of the attempt to brighten up both the look and sound of E Street and move it entirely away from the gloomy atmosphere of its earliest episodes. Now with a targeted demographic, Redlich admitted E Street was revamped to intentionally target Generation X, which he described as the "Coca Cola Generation":
There remained a dark undercurrent to the series, however, and while the writers ramped up the colour and comedy factor, they also set about revamping the cast, and E Street became notorious for regularly killing off established characters in unique and creative ways: the violent demise of two original characters – Rhonda Berry was shot dead in an armed siege and Sarah McKillop was raped and suffocated to death – reinforced the original intention by the producers to shock viewers and push boundaries.
By mid 1989, E Street had adopted an entirely new look. There was a redesigned title sequence accompanied by a punchier, remixed theme tune – plus, the expanded cast of trendy, likeable and younger characters brought the desired balance of soap, comedy and drama to the new-look E Street. The series was now on its way to positioning itself as the hip and street-wise soap opera, but edgier and more trendy than the safe and established Neighbours and Home and Away.
New characters From mid-to-late 1989 and into early 1990, many new cast members were added to the established original line up, and these characters included a new solicitor for the legal centre, Jennifer St. James (Virginia Hey); Elly's recurring rogue ex-husband, David Fielding (Noel Hodda), was promoted to series regular during his short-lived romance with Mikki Fallon (Peta Toppano); dashing airline pilot, Daniel Windsor (Chris Orchard), moved his family of four young children to E Street when he began a whirlwind romance with Elly. Daniel's eldest daughter, Toni (Toni Pearen), became particularly popular, and after Daniel eventually left the series with the rest of his family after six months, Toni stayed in E Street, and moved in with Elly for several years.