EastEnders

I seem to remember reading one side of the square wasn't even built at the time, and wasn't built until the back end of 1986, I imagine that was covered up with camera angles. A bit like how the Rover's end of the street on the original Corrie outdoor set was just a gate, so you never saw them filming directly down that end.

I do like the way they opened the show with a murder and a police investigation, it was a good way to get the viewers to understand the background of the characters with all the questions asked and the conversations around it.

Suprised they mentioned in the second episode today that Reg Cox was 58, I always had the idea he was meant to be a lot older with how he was talked about, in his 70s, or late 60s at the earliest. Maybe 58 was seen as being older back then than it is now.

Yes, I got the impression he was older from the way people talked about him
(“nasty old man”) and the way he looked in the first scene. His Wikipedia article (unofficial I know) describes him as a “pensioner” but also states he was 59 when he died. Even if someone took early retirement from a job, you would rarely refer to them a pensioner until they had reached state pension age, or had at least turned 60! Reg appeared in the spin off Civvy Street, set during World War II, when he would have been aged between 13 and 19, and his character hung around with Ethel and Lou, who were some ten years older.

I think even as recently as 30 years ago, middle-aged people dressed and acted older than they do nowadays. Neighbours Susan Kennedy is the same age now as Mrs Mangel was in 1986 - yet if you look at the characters side by side you could take them to be a generation apart!!

Later in the same episode, Dr Legg referred to him as being "very old", which seems even stranger, I'm sure even then you wouldn't normally refer to someone in their 50s as being very old.

There's the first non-square location scene then, episode 7, around a snow covered lake.

The picture quality on those lake location scenes looks poor though compared to the rest of the episode, were they using different equipment for non-square location work? Or maybe the cameras didn't like all the white from the fog, sky and snow.

A lot of location work in these EEs though, square or not, compared to the episodes of Corrie from the same era that were very studio bound. As we've seen on the ITV3 repeats, it was common until around 1989 for episodes of Corrie to be entirely studio bound, or only have a very brief location scene at best.

The original EE studio cameras were EMI2001s (ancient but workhorses with a very distinctive - pale flesh tone - and pretty sharp as they had 4 picture tubes not 3) They also used Ikegami 79s (not sure which variant) for backlot stuff I suspect. It could have been that they shot off-site location stuff on HiBand UMatic (not strictly allowed but it was done) with the same Ikegami cameras, but with a lot less control over lighting the picture quality took a tumble (and they may not have been racked)?

They may have recorded to 1" on location - there were VPR5 and VPR20 1" portable recorders - and also small single or two camera location vans that would contain a 'studio' 1" recorder and a vision op position were also built - but not sure if Elstree had one for EE (or used a BBC OBs one)

Nice to see Drama have actually recorded some continuity announcements for Classic Eastenders giving us a summary of what's happening.

Whereas ITV3 are still using their "back to the 80s" announcement for Corrie, even though they're into 1990 now.

The end credit VO I'm hearing each night on the late repeat isn't great, advising viewers to go to UKTV Play for more 'drama content", something no-one outside of TV would ever say

What are you talking about? I consume lots of drama content every day while using my logistical consumption solution.

I'm really impressed with how old and knackered the square looks despite being brand new at that point. They did a great job of ageing it.
It is fun though spotting stuff that should be there but isn't yet - the main omission being what is now The Arches which really should be there if the trains going over the market are going to continue on their journeys!

A quick Google brought up this page http://eastenders.wikia.com/wiki/Maps, the first map on which shows the set pretty much as it was at the start, complete with missing 4th side

They're saying "Drama content", not "drama content". Note the capitalisation. They mean content from the Drama channel.