Oh Dennis Dooby-Doo

OK, this one's for the Shannis fans ...

Den ... Dennis ... and now Denny, three generations of Watts males, with the last being able to boast that both his maternal and his paternal grandfather were one and the same.

Right now, before Dennis, there was someone else - not Tom Banks, not silly Ross, not even Phil. Here's the episode showing Grant and Sharon's Boxind Day wedding from 1991. If nothing else, it shows how good and how unpretentiously unsensational this show was. These were the days of Ian smarting form Cindy's first desertion, Pat and Frank at the B and B, Kathy post-Pete, and nice Phil Mitchell. Enjoy this first ...

There you go ... written by the brilliant Tony McHale, a particular favourite of mine.

Many Shannis shippers subscribe to the Dennis formula because that period of Sharon's tenure in Walford (2001-2006) is the only period in which they remember her. That's not their fault. The show's been running for more than 27 years now, but these people should realise that EastEnders didn't begin with the Slaters and kick into life when Dennis Rickman showed up on the Square.

Sharon's wedding to Dennis resulted in the body of their father, Den Watts, being purposely exhumed from his impromptu grave in the cellar of the Vic. Sharon's wedding to Grant coincided with Mark Fowler telling his parents that he was HIV positive. Which scenario is the most likely to have happened in real life? I ask you.

People shipping Shannis also are apt, conveniently, to forget that when Sharon originally returned in 2001, after extricating herself from entangling with the woeful Ross (played by the real-life son of Ann Mitchell), she promptly fell into the arms of Phil Mitchell. Well, what was there to stop them? 

We all know the story of Grant's and Sharon's marriage, how it was marred by what we would recognise today as Grant's PTSD, and how his physical abuse of Sharon resulted in this:-

The story behind this was that, one year into their marriage, Grant wanted to start a family, and Sharon wasn't ready. One thing led to another and Grant reacted, ofttimes, violently. Whilst he was in prison for domestic abuse, Sharon and Phil carried on their affair, with Sharon, at one time, agreeing to leave Grant for Phil, until Grant returned in a fragile state, and Sharon realised she had to stay with him.

The Sharon-Phil affair, known as Sharongate, began twenty years ago, and culminated two years later in this unforgettable scene:-

Which ultimately ended with this odd confessional:-

Everybody knows Sharon's backstory and how it's entertwined with the various men who have appeared in her lives. Now there appear to be five, from two families: The Mitchell Bruvs and her father, husband/brother and son - Den, Dennis and Denny.

Look, I understand as well the fascination that the Shannis fans have with Sharon and Dennis and how much easier it is for them to identify Sharon with Dennis. It's probably the same for the rising generation of Shack fans, who'll identify the "chemistry" between Sharon and Jack as simply the fact that Sharon is a pretty lady and Jack is a pretty man - therefore, they belong together far more than Sharon with bald-headed, beet-faced fiftysomething Phil Mitchell.

Sharon and the Mitchells belong to a more realistic time in EastEnders. Watch the scenes above, all of which date from the early to the mid-Nineties. How many devastatingly attractive people do you see in those scenes? Or, putting it another way, how many of those actors would make it past a cast call on today's EastEnders? Answer: None.

The most attractive females of that era were Kathy Beale, Sharon and Sam Mitchell (played by Daniella Westbrook). None of the men would break into today's programme. But that was the gist of the era: EastEnders was kitchen sink drama about people you'd quite easily pass in the street on any day of the week.

The Mitchell brothers were created for Sharon's young adulthood, her independence after her mother left Walford and after she thought her father had died. The Den Watts we knew from those days was a slightly dodgy pub landlord, married to a woman he hated, doting on his adopted daughter and keeping a posh bit on the side. He was tough, but he was devoted to his community, but his fatal flaw was his secret penchant for young girls - as in sixteen year-olds, barely jailbait variety.

The fact that Sharon was spoiled and prone to having her way was much in evidence in her early days with the Mitchells. It was also evident that she was hopelessly in love with Grant. Listen to her rationale for having an affair with Phil - that Phil was the nice part of Grant; then listen to her leaving Grant, which should be a bit more familiar to current viewers. Sharon makes herself the victim, ultimately, where when Sharongate erupted, she accepted her portion of blame for her affair with Phil. In her departure scene, she rails at Grant for humiliating her, when she had actually done the dirty, for offering her to his friends, for making her feel like a whore (her words); but she culminates all of it by telling him she loves him.

We know when she left, that she was already pregnant with his child, a child she later aborted.

Sharon's return in 2001 saw her reunite romantically with Phil, a liaison which ended when she told Phil she was unable to have children following complications from her abortion. Even though Phil wanted to adopt a child, she refused. Then, from 2003 onwards, Louise Berridge came upon the idea of building a family around Sharon, especially when TPTB decided to raise Den from the dead.

Yes, I know this was the reason for creating and casting the character of Dennis. And for re-introducing the dire Vicky Fowler. They wanted another Watts family as centrepieces, especially since Barbara Windsor was ill and taking sick leave, and Steve McFadden had decided, when Leslie Grantham signed on, to take a year's sabbatical.

One wonders what sort of dynamic would have arisen had McFadden stayed and how this would have played out with a Phil-Dennis-Den situation, with Sharon in the middle of this.

I still think Dennis was a plot device. He was also the original "pretty boy" and started a legion of pretty men at the core of the programme, the vast majority of whom were pretty unconvincing actors. Even the actor who portrayed Dennis, Nigel Martin, whose background was musical comedy, stated that he auditioned for the part in an effort to expand his portfolio of acting experience. I liked Harman. I liked him more for the fact that, in interviews both during and after his stint on EastEnders, he always laughed at Dennis and how the producers wanted him depicted.

Do I think Dennis was the love of Sharon's life? No. He was a creation of Louise Berridge, continued by Kathleen Hutchison, both of whom paid far more attention to the crowing of the teen element on the then BBC EastEnders' board. As a couple, Sharon was the far stronger of the two characters - she had the business nous, she had the businesses. Dennis was fey with money and hung around shady characters. He had killed a man, something which didn't sit right with Sharon. And his so-called redemption in her love came about and was explored for one reason and one reason only: Nigel Harman had called time on Dennis, and Harman wanted Dennis killed off.

The death of someone young, with a modicum of promise and before his prime always elevates that person, real or fictitious, to a level of quasi-sainthood. Because Dennis's and Sharon's marriage didn't last that long and because we never got to see him present at the birth of his son and being a husband and father, it's easy to sanctify his character; but we know that EastEnders is a soap. And nothing happy ever lasts in SoapLand.

Dennis was obsessive in his love for Sharon, while for a good deal of the time, she wrestled with the fact that he, technically, was her brother. Her father, Zombie Den, certainly had problems with that. Accepting them as a couple meant he would have had to deny the child he'd raised as his daughter, because he couldn't deny his natural son.

Zombie Den was a darker Den than his original persona. He was more controlling Den, a forerunner of Archie Mitchell sans the sexual abuser. In fact, numerous people have commented on the fact that, before the tacked-on addenda of child abuse, Archie and Ronnie were what Den and Sharon would have morphed into, had Leslie Grantham behaved himself and everyone stayed on.

Actually, there was a classic scene between Zombie Den and Sharon during late 2004, at the house where they were living (now having been taken over by Brannings). It's late at night and Den is having a glass of wine. Sharon is in the room, dressed in a short silk nightshirt. The talk is of Dennis, what else? They argue, Den drops his wineglass and it shatters. When Sharon takes a step forward, she steps on shards of glass. Then there follows a scene where Den tenderly removes the glass from her foot and bathes it. Creepy? You betcha. In fact, creepiness saturated that whole aura of family during that particular period.

As for Dennis, well, he was a murderer, something Sharon, with her high-ended moral code, found pretty damned difficult to fathom:-

(Pay close attention to this ... This is why Sharon will ultimately forgive Phil Mitchell telling Dennis what Jonnie Allen had done to Sharon.)

Dennis was a loose cannon, and anyone who knows EastEnders would know that, had Harman stayed and both he and Dean remained in the Square, it wouldn't have been long before sparks of the wrong sort were flying. Especially if Ross Kemp had remained longer in his second stint. We simply don't know what the future would have held for Sharon and Dennis, but - in soap tradition - there wouldn't have been bluebirds and happiness.

I had trouble believing in Shannis, simply because, for me, they didn't "look right" as a couple. There are loads of reasons people don't "look right" as a couple. I never bought Dawn and Jase the way I bought the chemistry in a one night stand between Roxy and Jase. Dawn was too shallow (even shallower than Roxy) for Jase. I never bought into the "love's young dream" meme for Billy and Honey, when Billy was a man in his late forties and Honey was supposed to be in her late twenties.

At the time of Shannis, Sharon was an attractive woman in her thirties. She didn't look like anything else, just like now she's an attractive woman in her early forties. Dennis was five years younger and looked even younger. There was a kid brother aspect that bothered me somewhat (and bothered some other people as well), and then there was the singular distinction that Dennis was totally unlike any man to whom Sharon had previously been attracted - not Simon Wicks, not Grant or Phil Mitchell, not the unfortunate Ross and certainly not Tom Banks. There was always the "geezer" element to which Sharon was attracted, the soupcon of charm which Den Mach I possessed (and which Zombie Den did not).

Dennis was a pretty young boy, and some of the attention Sharon lathers on his son is eerily reminiscent of the way she treated Dennis in the latter days of their time together - almost like a childpet. I'm not good at putting into words how I didn't buy into Shannis as one big love affair. The best person for that is the Walford Web commentator fanny arbuckle, who, also, was not a Shannis fan, because for us, the chemistry eluded our perception.

During her second stint, Sharon came alive and became her old self when the Mitchell brothers arrived back in Walford. There was far more sexual chemistry in the three-minute scene where she told Grant about his aborted child than there ever was in two years of Shannis.

That Grant is still foremost in her thoughts is evident as well. Sharon's first question, upon arrival back in Walford, was about Grant's whereabouts. When Phil told her he was in Portugal, she - unconvincingly - replied, "Good."

Phil retorted, "Are you sure about that?"

That's the essence of Sharon's ethos right there. Phil loves her unconditionally, but he suspects she may not love him as much. She loves the idea of Dennis - people who die young and tragically without achieving their potential are always easily romanticized figures. Sharon knew the happiness of having married someone she loved and having been impregnated by him. She didn't know any of the potential troubles or demons which might have plagued a Shannis long-term marriage, and - now in her forties, approaching middle age, she is having an epiphany moment, remembering her first husband and their foibles, knowing he's still around (and available), and she may be giving vent to feelings long surpressed.

Dennis was always going to be a short-term character, the same way Sean Slater (another re-mould of Grant Mitchell) was always going to be the same - because the actors in question were using the programme as a stepping stone either to gain experience or to further their careers in a different direction.

Even Harman, upon leaving, was critical of Eastenders and the soap genre.

 Actor Nigel Harman has expressed his pleasure at performing Harold Pinter (at the Crucible in Sheffield) rather than being 'Little Den' in EastEnders, reports The Stage.

“I’ll be working on a classic piece of literature, where every word, every comma, every piece of punctuation is sacred, and coming from two years where I was basically making up my lines as I went along on EastEnders, it will be amazing.”

Earlier this year, continues The Stage, Harman had another pop at EastEnders scripts.

“How can I put this politely? You’re not always guaranteed a good script at EastEnders. I’ve watched a couple of people deliver lines that were so spectacularly bad, so spectacularly well, it’s bowled me over.”

Those quotations come from 2006. One wonders what Harman would make of the EastEnders' scripts of recent times, especially under Kirkwood's writing room.

I personally don't think the big "reveal" of what Phil told Dennis on the night he died is forthcoming soon - unless Phil, as part of his ubiquitous redemption, tells Sharon, himself. He is the only one who can. I don't think he would have told Shirley. In five minutes, Phil's told Sharon more about his involvement in covering up Ben's actions than he's told Shirley in years. Peggy knew what Phil did and cautioned him against telling Sharon and Peggy is gone. Grant knew and Grant is in Portugal. Danny and Jake Moon knew, and Danny is dead and Jake may be also. Jonnie Allen knew, and he's dead too.

My guess is that Sharon's fey son will bond with Phil Mitchell, and he with Denny. There will be a relationship, maybe even a marriage and a second son. It may be years before the truth comes out, when Denny might be old enough to understand.

Barbara Windsor, who knew the Mitchell characters well, once stated that the only person to bring the Mitchells back together and raise them up again was Sharon. The Mitchells were made for Sharon. I reckon right about now that Sharon will be custom-made for the Mitchells.

Dennis is a nice memory to have. He never fulfilled whatever potential some Shannis fans comfort themselves with what he may have achieved. It's just mete to remember that a real iconic character is often nuanced, and Dennis wouldn't have continued down the road to sainthood in the way people would like to imagine if he'd lived.

I liked Dennis, but I remember him for being the first in a long line of pretty boys who either burn brightly and then leave in a blaze or who now seem to simmer on the back burner and fizzle out before coming to a boil.