WISH YOU WEREN’T HERE...
Marion McMullen looks at the launch of ill-fated BBC soap Eldorado 30 years ago
ELDORADO was hailed as the new ratings winner for the BBC, offering viewers sun, sand, sex and sangria.
The BBC1 soap about ex-pats in Spain promised a touch of glamour to combat the doom and gloom storylines of EastEnders, but it ran into problems from the start.
The opening episode on July 6, 1992, found itself up against an hour-long Coronation Street special... and it was all downhill from there.
The soap turned into an embarrassment for the BBC who had splashed out £10m of licence fee payers’ money on the TV offering and created a purpose-built set in the hills of Marbella, on Spain’s Costa del Sol, for the fictional community of Los Barcos.
It was a major investment, but Eldorado was seen as a programme with a long-term future.
Instead, the sunshine soap left viewers in the shade and it lasted just 156 episodes before being axed a year after it was launched.
Originally titled, Little England, the opening storylines included middle-aged resident Bunny (Roger Walker) returning
from the UK with a 17-year-old bride called Fizz, played by Kathy Pitkin.
Eldorado ran three times a week, replacing popular chat show Wogan in the TV schedules.
The sun-soaked series was a ratings flop at the start, but was attracting around 10 million viewers when new BBC1 controller Alan Yentob came along and burst the soap bubble by cancelling it.
The last thing viewers saw was Eldorado regular Marcus Tandy escaping an attempt on his life and heading off into the sunset with his girlfriend Pilar Moreno (Sandra Sandri) in the final episode, bringing to an end of one of the Beeb’s costliest mistakes.