Is EastEnders more racist than Midsomer Murders?

Why Aren't People Calling For The Producers of EastEnders To Be Sacked?

A few years ago, Brian True-May was suspended from his job. True-May was the producer of ITV drama "Midsomer Murders", a detective show set in rural England, and his crime was to admit that he didn't use black or Asian people in the series as 'it wouldn't be an English village with them"

The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust said True-May's comments were out of date and no longer reflected English society.

"Clearly, as a fictional work, the producers of Midsomer Murders are entitled to their flights of fancy, but to claim that the English village is purely white is no longer true and not a fair reflection of our society, particularly to this show's large international audience," said the trust's director Rob Berkeley. "It is not a major surprise that ethnic minority people choose not to watch a show that excludes them."

Well, maybe...

The show is set in the fictional county of Midsomer, so gathering demographic data isn't easy... but it is filmed in South Oxfordshire, where the ethnic breakdown is

95% White British
1.7% Asian
1% Black
1% Chinese
1.3% Other

There are, on average, 25 cast members in each episode, so I guess on that basis there should be one non White British character in each broadcast, occasionally there should be two, sometimes none.

But in the main, True-May wasn't really speaking out of turn. If you went for a day out in the English Countryside and didn't see any BAME's, I don't think it would register as a massive shock.

However, enough people got their knickers in a twist to see him suspended, and have to apologise before being reinstated, only to leave the show a year or so later.

But there is an equally popular show on British TV that is vastly less representative of the demographic it purports to represent, yet escapes questioning let alone criticism; EastEnders

Wikipedia's description of the original producer of EastEnders objective reads;

"the show was to be about "everyday life" in the inner city "today" and regarded it as a "slice of life". Creator/producer Julia Smith declared that "We don't make life, we reflect it". She also said, "We decided to go for a realistic, fairly outspoken type of drama which could encompass stories about homosexuality, rape, unemployment,  racial prejudice, etc., in a believable context. Above all, we wanted realism"."

Well that was in the mid 80s, & the East End has changed a lot in the last three decades.... but you wouldn't know that if you took the population of Walford as a reflection of everyday life in the inner city

In 1985 there were 49 cast members, 37 of whom were White British.. This compares with 41 out of 52 now. As a proportion of the cast this is an increase from 75.5% to 78.8%

(I would be interested to see the numbers for East London as a whole from 1985 compared to 2014)

Walford is supposedly a combination of Walthamstow and Stratford. The actual percentage of White Brits in Walthamstow in 2011 was 38%. In Stratford it was 17%, giving an average of  27.5%, and an overstatement by the BBC in 2014 of 51.3%

The proportion of Asian cast members was 4.1% in 1985, rising to 7.7% in 2014. This is against 21% of Walthamstow & 42% in Stratford, and average of 31.5% and an understatement of 23.8%

To be fair to the BBC, it has published articles on it's website denying claims of "white flight" in London

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21511904

.. and the fact that their flagship soap has seen an increase in White Brits in the East End is at least consistent with that belief!

I can't deny that I recognise the demographic represented in EastEnders.. the problem is I don't live in the East End, but Havering, where a lot of the people have moved to from... the East End.

Walford (2014) Walthamstow Newham Havering (2011)
White British                     79% 38% 17%  83%
Asian                                  8%  21%  42%  5%
Black                                   8%  17%  20%  5%
E European                         2%  11%  15%   3%

(I would have thought, in the three years since the census was published, the Havering percentages will have moved towards the Walford figures)

What does this matter? To me it doesn't really... I neither watch EastEnders or live in the East End. But what does bother me is why it doesn't matter to the people that wanted Brian True-May disciplined.

Hannah Pool, writing in The Guardian at the time said;

"If I was inclined to give True-May the benefit of the doubt, I'd say it's clear he believes he's simply giving his viewers what they want, which begs the question, does he think Midsomer fans are racist?"

That logic demands that Pool must believe the BBC thinks the UK racist, otherwise why couldn't we cope with a soap opera set in the capital with a demographically realistic cast? Why are the BBC pretending that the East End is still how it was in the 80s, when the facts tell us that demographic  headed East long ago?