Glitter vs. Grit: Why We Oscillated Between American Excess and Walford Misery

In 1985, the British psyche was trapped in a tug-of-war between the diamond-encrusted violence of Denver and the beige despair of East London.

If you were an alien anthropologist landing in the United Kingdom circa 1986, attempting to understand the human condition through our television habits, you would have suffered a severe nervous breakdown. On one channel, the human species appeared to be a race of orange-skinned titans who lived in mansions, drank champagne for breakfast, and solved disputes by throwing each other into lily ponds. On the other channel, the species was pale, wore conflicting patterns of knitwear, and solved disputes by shouting “Get outta my pub!” before staring miserably into a rainy street.

This was the great cultural dichotomy of the 1980s. We were a nation suffering from severe trans-Atlantic whiplash. We were caught between the aspiration of Dynasty and the reality of EastEnders.

The Carrington Event: Pornography for Capitalists

To understand the impact of Dynasty (and its cowboy-hatted cousin, Dallas), you have to remember that 1980s Britain was, visually speaking, quite brown. Our cars were brown. Our carpets were brown. Our food was varying shades of beige. Into this drab landscape exploded the Carringtons.

Dynasty wasn’t really a drama; it was a catalogue of things we couldn’t afford. It was aspirational sci-fi. We didn’t watch it for the plot, which usually involved oil rights, amnesia, or someone falling off a balcony. We watched it for the Shoulder Pads.

Let’s talk about those pads. They defied physics. By 1986, Krystle and Alexis were walking through doors sideways. These weren’t garments; they were structural engineering projects. They projected a silhouette of aggressive, triangular dominance. And the hair! It was teased, sprayed, and lacquered into helmets that could withstand a nuclear blast.

For an hour a week, Mrs. Higgins from Doncaster could sit in her terrifyingly cold front room and inhabit a world where the biggest problem wasn’t the gas bill, but whether Joan Collins was going to sabotage her merger. It was glorious, tacky, and completely un-British. It taught us that being rich meant being constantly furious and wearing lamé at 10 AM.

The Walford Gloom: Fetishising the Misery

And then, the drums would kick in. Doof-doof-doof…

If Dynasty was the cocaine high of the 80s, EastEnders was the comedown. Launched in 1985, it was the BBC’s attempt to do “grit.” And by god, did they deliver grit. They delivered grit by the lorry load, dumped it in a fictional square, and forced us to watch people drown in it.

While American soaps were about oil barons, EastEnders was about people who owned a fruit and veg stall. The contrast was jarring. Blake Carrington worried about his multi-national conglomerate; Arthur Fowler worried about stealing the Christmas Club money because he’d had a nervous breakdown. One was Greek Tragedy; the other was Kitchen Sink Tragedy.

But here is the weird thing: we loved the misery. We revelled in it. There was a perverse comfort in watching the Fowler family disintegrate in a house that looked exactly like ours, only slightly smaller and with more shouting.

The Tale of the Tape: Denver vs. Walford

• The Drink of Choice: Dynasty: Crystal Cristal. EastEnders: Warm mild or a gin and tonic that looked like paint stripper.
• The slap: Dynasty: An open-handed, theatrical strike usually followed by a gasp and a tumble onto a chaotic sofa. EastEnders: A grim punch in the Queen Vic toilets.
• The wardrobe: Dynasty: Nolan Miller couture. EastEnders: A sheepskin coat that smelled of damp dog and 20 Benson & Hedges.
• The lighting: Dynasty: Soft focus, vaseline-on-the-lens, everyone glowing. EastEnders: Harsh, grey, sodium-lit depression.

The Thatcherite Schizophrenia

Why did we hold these two opposing forces in our heads simultaneously? It was the perfect metaphor for the Thatcher years. We were being told by the government to be “go-getters,” to buy our council houses, to aspire, to make loads of money (The Dynasty Dream). But the reality for half the country was unemployment, industrial decay, and the creeping sense that the community was falling apart (The EastEnders Reality).

We wanted to be Alexis Colby, but we knew, deep down, we were Dot Cotton. We wanted the power suit, but we were wearing the tabard.

There was a specific Friday night ritual for millions of us. You’d watch something glossy and American, feeling a pang of envy for the sunshine and the swimming pools. Then, you’d switch over to the BBC, see Dirty Den handing Angie the divorce papers on Christmas Day (watched by 30 million people, a number that is frankly terrifying), and feel a strange sense of relief. “Ah,” we thought. “That’s real. That’s proper.”

In the end, the grit won. The shoulder pads deflated. The hairspray wore off. But for a few golden years, we lived in that bizarre middle ground—dreaming of Denver, but living in Walford.