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There are certain headlines that people dream about. “Inflation remains at record low”. “January heatwave on the way for the UK (but don’t worry, the climate crisis is sorted)”. For me, it’s: “Grant Mitchell is returning to EastEnders”.
As a soap fan who grew up in the 1990s, some of my earliest TV memories are of Grant’s trademark blend of psychopath and what I believe soap magazines used to describe as “womaniser”. One of the most well-known British television characters of the decade, Grant reached icon status as half of the Mitchell brothers and a third of “Sharongate”. (For anyone reading who was born after 1988, this was when Grant discovered wife Sharon was having an affair with brother Phil and promptly tried to murder him.)
Since he was last onscreen briefly in 2016, I’ve been waiting for Grant’s return from his fictional villa in Portugal like the second coming if Jesus was a violent bald cockney. And so it has come to pass: the BBC has confirmed Grant Mitchell (Ross Kemp) will be returning to EastEnders as part of the soap’s 40th anniversary celebrations. Producers say Kemp will return for a “short stint” and will “play a significant part in the show’s 40th anniversary”. Details of his new storyline and the circumstances of his return haven’t yet been revealed, but the BBC said “there is sure to be drama”. Classic Grant.
There is something oddly comforting about the return of soap characters we’ve grown up with, like seeing an old friend you’ve watched marry, divorce and endure several life-threatening accidents. It inspires fond memories of shows in their heyday while taking viewers back to their own idealised pasts, typically when we were younger and less full of existential dread.
Soap bosses clearly understand this. Over the past year, EastEnders alone has brought back David Wicks (Michael French), Bianca Jackson (Patsy Palmer), Chrissie Watts (Tracy-Ann Oberman) and Nigel Bates (Paul Bradley). Before Christmas, they snuck in a cameo from Joe Wicks (Paul Nicholls) on an iPhone.
Producers don’t even let a small matter like the character being dead get in the way of their return. On Christmas Eve, Coronation Street’s legendary villain Richard Hillman (Brian Capron) appeared in a dream sequence as part of ex-wife Gail Platt’s exit. That he had drowned after driving a Ford Galaxy into a canal – with himself and his step-family in it – over two decades earlier didn’t need to spoil the fun.
Cindy Beale (Michelle Collins) was the star of EastEnders’ festive episodes last month, despite the fact she had died in childbirth offscreen in 1998. (It turns out Cindy had actually been living under witness protection in Spain this whole time, which is obvious when you really think about it.) Watching Cindy cheat on longsuffering Ian Beale on Christmas Day, as Phil and Nigel met up with Sharon in the Queen Vic, you could have been forgiven for thinking you’d passed out on the Baileys and woken up in 1993. That the BBC had aired Wallace and Gromit featuring Feathers McGraw a few hours earlier would only have encouraged the vague sense that John Major was prime minister.
The comfort of classic soap characters speaks to the wider trend of 90s nostalgia in popular culture: from interior design and supermodels to boybands. Recent years have seen reboots of some of the biggest television hits from the 1990s on both sides of the Atlantic, from Gladiators in the UK to Frasier in the US.
The nostalgia shows no signs of abating. Ant and Dec are currently developing a sequel to Byker Grove, the much-loved Newcastle-based teen drama that made a generation afraid to go paintballing. Just last month, Disney+ announced Malcom in the Middle – which first aired as we entered the millennium – will return with the first new episodes in nearly two decades.
Meanwhile, streaming has allowed new – and old – audiences to find 90s classics like Friends and Sex and the City, with viewers flipping between tweeting about problematic jokes and just being grateful the show won’t get cancelled before they finish watching it. Throw a stick and you’ll hit a thinkpiece by a millennial reminiscing about the best programmes of our youths. If you want to, it’s now entirely possible to raise your children on the kids’ shows you grew up with, slipping in Home Improvement and Dinosaurs in between Bluey and Peppa Pig.
Perhaps this just means TV executives are out of ideas or that cash trumps creativity (I would like to know what ITV has on Graham Norton to get him to sign up for the Wheel of Fortune reboot). And yet it’s hard to deny that producers are giving audiences what we want. That the Gavin and Stacey finale has now had almost 20 million views – making it the most-watched scripted programme since 2002 – shows clearly how viewers crave spending time with characters they first met decades ago.
As it’s that time of year, I suppose we could do some self-reflection. What does it say about the strains of adulthood today that we seek comfort by reliving our childhoods? Is modern culture empty if we wish to rake over television from 30 years ago? Does mindlessly absorbing entertainment from the past distract us from the breakdown of the social order and death of liberal democracy? I say embrace it. Let this be the year we go full retro. Watch Grant Mitchell on EastEnders before going to the Oasis reunion. Dream of a leftwing Labour government while over-plucking your eyebrows. 2025 is the new 1995.
