Episode I

Episode I, Episode 1 or Episode One may refer to:

See also

Episode 1 (Shortland Street)

Episode 1 of the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street, was first broadcast on 25 May 1992.

Storyline

The episode starts with paramedics Tom Neilson and Sam Aleni driving down a road with their siren on. Tom's wife Marjorie Neilson answers the phone and hears of a car crash involving a young couple by a construction site. Tom and Sam arrive at the scene to find a teenager in labour having received head injuries. Tom is surprised to find his teenage son Stuart at the scene. Against protocol, Tom and Sam decide to take the women to Shortland Street Clinic as a result of her brain injury.

Meanwhile, the new doctor Hone Ropata arrives at the clinic. Director of nursing Carrie Burton welcomes him and begins to give him a tour of the building. Nurse Alison Raynor attends to a young aggressive teenage hoodlum who refuses help.

The paramedics arrive at the clinic and ask for a doctor. Carrie asks receptionist Kirsty Knight to call for Dr. Chris Warner. Meanwhile, Chris is seducing his aerobics instructor who has turned his bleeper off. Hone decides he has to deliver the baby and goes against protocol to do so. Carrie advises him not to and reminds him that he is not in Guatemala anymore, which Hone ignores. Stuart is denied entrance to the room the girl is giving birth as he is not family, to which he proclaims he is the baby's father. Tom and Marj are shocked that their highly religious son has had sex before marriage.

History of EastEnders

EastEnders was launched at a critical moment in the BBC's history and was intended to demonstrate the BBC's ability to produce popular programming. It started airing on the night after a major identity change for the channel, with the show representing the "new face" of the BBC. Some critics at first derided the new offering, as it was clear that the BBC wished to bridge the gap between the network and its competitor, ITV.

The BBC brass was vindicated, however, when EastEnders became wildly popular and displaced Coronation Street from the top of the ratings for the rest of the 1980s and much of the 1990s and 2000s.

A previous UK soap set in an East End market was ATV's Market in Honey Lane between 1967 and 1969. However this show, which graduated from one showing a week to two in three separate series (the latter series being shown in different time slots across the ITV Network) was very different in style and approach to EastEnders. The British Film Institute describe Market In Honey Lane thus: