Wednesday, 5 January 2011

Has Eastenders gone too far this time?


I don't even watch Eastenders or any other soaps but I aways know when a big-ish storyline hits because it's all over the TV/news/twitter. I remember hearing from the other half who is a soaps fan (cause for divorce?) that two of the character's Kat and Ronnie both have babies, one dies and the mother swaps that baby with the living one. Processing that through my mind was hard to stomach. Why would a soap create this kind of storyline? Do they really want the ratings that badly?

So cot death happens, that is true to life and if it helps awareness of it then I'm for it. It was something I was always terrified of cot death as a new Mother so I did my research into it and did all I can to prevent such a thing. But did Eastenders really need to take it one step further by swapping the babies over and creating such a huge storyline from such a tragic event.

It came on to TV last night and it wasn't something I wished to watch. As a mother I couldn't even begin to imagine such a thing happening to me and my family, I didn't want to be hurt by watching it and putting myself through imagining myself in that situation. Even the actress Samantha Womack who pays the character Ronnie says it was the most horrific four weeks of her life filming the cot death scenes, she goes on to say that she really hopes it is taken in the spirit which it is intended which is about producing dramatic television. But was this taking 'dramatic television' too far?

Have Eastenders no respect for mothers who have lost there babies or were they genuinely trying to make parents more aware of cot death? I've not watched it and have no intention of so I cant really comment too much about how it was put forward other then what I've red and heard about. The BBC has received nearly 3,500 complaints over this storyline already. My own personal opinion of it is that this was done in a tasteless and insensitive way, it's a sensitive subject which could of been handed in a totally different way. Would love to know your thoughts about this.



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