Abandoned £2m television set hides sad story of UK’s most disastrous soap after it was tanked by meddling BBC producers
THEY were the dream team with the Midas touch behind the success of the BBC’s first soap opera, EastEnders.
So when the Beeb was under threat of privatisation and desperately needed another ratings winner in the early 90s, producer Julia Smith, writer and creator Tony Holland and scriptwriter Tony Jordan were given the mammoth task of creating another TV mega-hit.
Their answer was Eldorado, a sun-soaked soap opera to rival legendary US show Dynasty, focusing on a group of glamorous expats living in a small community in Spain.
But the derided series was tarnished from the start with a change of name and direction, infighting over storylines, the casting of non-actors and the disturbing portrayal of a middle-aged balding man newly married to a pretty 17-year-old girl.
It led to the astonishing sight of its £2million set, which saw practically an entire village built in Andalusia, left abandoned and crumbling for decades after Eldorado was swiftly canned.
Now, as reruns of the notorious short-lived show are set to return to our screens, we reveal the secrets of soapland’s biggest disaster, which was quite literally built on sand.
The dream had begun years earlier when Tony Holland, who created EastEnders, was on holiday in Majorca, Spain, walking to a nudist beach.
“I turned into a piazza where there were bars, bed and breakfast and it was an entire community. A sort of Britain in miniature,” he recalled.
When he heard that the BBC was searching for a big new soap opera, he took the scrawled idea out of his bottom drawer to create a show he dubbed ‘Little England’ and brought in his EastEnders scriptwriter, former barrow boy, Tony Jordan.
“The original concept, which I thought was great, was something like a siege mentality,” said Jordan.
“It felt like Khartoum or Zulu about these Brits in this little fort, making a fresh start away from the rain, with all these ‘foreigners’ around them.’”
But would the BBC bosses risk millions on such an undertaking abroad? The answer was yes and Julia Smith became the producer.
At the end of 1991 they were given just six months to get one of the most ambitious television productions ever up and running.
Work started on building an entire village from scratch in the remote Spanish hillside, miles away from the nearest city, Fuengirola, at the eye-watering cost of £2million.
Casting rushed
In the meantime, Julia set about casting. She had a reputation for choosing unknowns, like Leslie Grantham as Dirty Den in EastEnders. And she was about to do the same again.
In Spain, German student Kai Maurer was selling timeshares and had never acted before in his life when a friend persuaded him to go for an audition.
“I was reading the script in the car and arrived on set with building work going on and I was introduced to Julia Smith and I read with her,” he recalled. “It took five minutes, at the most. And that was it. I got the part.”
Six other unknowns were also cast. But there were also seasoned actors such as Campbell Morrison who played expat father-of-two Drew Lockhead.
“I was a jobbing actor and in some ways I was looking at this as my pension,” he said. “It was the BBC and was going to run and run.”
Patricia Brake’s role as Drew’s wife Gwen, was created especially for her and veteran thespian Faith Kent was chosen as busybody Olive King.
But their excitement began to wane when they flew to Spain in April 1992 for a read through, three months before the show was due to air, three times a week.
“I didn’t know what a read through was,” says Kai Maurer, 19, cast as Dieter Shultz, the golden-haired windsurfing instructor and toyboy lover of nightclub singer Trish Valentine, played by 49-year-old Polly Perkins.
“Everyone was speaking very nicely and then it was my turn with this thick German accent.”
“I was very worried that there were too many inexperienced and, in fact, rank amateurs, that had been selected,” said Faith Kent.
A creepy storyline featured balding Bunny Charlson, played by Roger Walker – 47 but looking considerably older – and his teen bride Fizz, 17-year-old Kathy Pitkin in her first acting role.
It should have raised alarm bells but remarkably did not – except with viewers.
New lows
A general sinking feeling reached a new low when politics altered the whole concept of the show.
In 1992, barriers were tumbling across Europe and BBC bosses wanted this to be reflected in the soap. The call went out to give non-British characters much bigger parts.
“We would have script meetings to talk about stories and characters and then suddenly there would be a Danish family,” said Tony Jordan.
“We would get our heads around that, thinking maybe a big storyline was planned for them later and then, two weeks later, another script meeting and there would be a French family and so on.
It had no depth. It was just Euro porridge
“If Little England was about a siege mentality with Brits trying to survive abroad in a little community, inviting foreigners into the ‘fort’ didn’t seem to make sense.”
When Tony Holland was told that Little England was not an appropriate title and it was to be called Eldorado, he knew his dream had well and truly floated out to sea.
“It had no depth. It was just Euro porridge,” he said.
Filming started with the set still being built and when Tony Jordan visited to take a look, he was shocked by the terrible acting in a scene that involved Bunny and Fizz at the breakfast table when local handyman Snowy White (Patch Connolly) calls in for a chat.
He said: “I still remember the scene vividly to this day. I just thought, ‘F…!’ It didn’t bear any resemblance to what we had talked about.
“This was not the show that Tony Holland had been excited about. All the enthusiasm I had over the months we had spent talking about it, just went in an instant. It was awful.”
To everyone’s relief the opening show on July 6 1992, which went head to head against a special edition of Coronation Street, was watched by over eight million viewers.
But the newspaper critics had their knives out with one savagely remarking, “As for sun, sex and sangria, Eldorado looks to be about as sexy as a cold suet pudding.”
By the end of the first week, ratings had dropped to five million and six weeks in just 2.8 million remained.
Heads were about to roll and it started at the top with the shock sacking of the once mighty Julia Smith. She was replaced by former EastEnders producer Corrine Hollingworth.
“There were such obvious problems with it that I couldn’t make it any worse,” she recalled.
“Some of the acting was execrable. I couldn’t believe that they had gone ahead with having scenes played in foreign languages with no subtitles.
“The Fizz and Bunny relationship – to have an elderly man with a young woman – looked unpleasant and I thought there was no way the audience would engage with it.”
‘It was mass slaughter’
“It was mass slaughter,” recalled Kai Maurer, who was amongst several sacked along with Kathy Pitkin, as Corrine set about making desperate improvements while the show continued to air three nights a week.
Depressed, Tony Holland resigned. Corrine’s changes, that included bringing in new characters and much improved scripts, did manage to turn fortunes and as ratings began to climb, many people thought it had turned a corner.
But when John Birt became the new director general at the BBC with an emphasis on the high ground and Alan Yentob replaced Jonathan Powell as Controller of BBC1, fear set in once again.
Eventually Corrine announced to the cast and crew on set that the sun had finally set on Eldorado.
The last episode aired on July 9 1993 and the set briefly became a hotel afterwards and then stood like a ghost town for decades with the occasional filming of TV productions taking place along with ‘airsoft’ shooting games.
With a loss estimated at £10million, Eldorado had become ‘fool’s gold’, earning the reputation of being the biggest failure in the corporation’s history.
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