Disastrous weddings, pub brawls, love-rat scandals, serial killer neighbours and the absolute impossibility of ever having a quiet Christmas. Life in soapland is not for the fainthearted.

For 40 years, viewers have watched EastEnders for exactly this kind of drama. Now, the BBC show is celebrating its milestone birthday with an “unmissable” week of episodes – including a live special and the chance for some audience participation.

Ross Kemp is returning as Grant Mitchell, we’ll see Walford legend Natalie Cassidy’s final scenes as Sonia, and the identity of Cindy’s Christmas Day attacker will be revealed.

See? Nothing good ever comes of spending Christmas at home in soapland. (And for anyone who thought Cindy died in prison in 1998, she came back from the dead in 2023 after actually spending time in witness protection. Keep up!).

In an Albert Square first, viewers this week will get the chance to vote on whether Denise Fox (played by Diane Parish) should reunite with her estranged husband Jack Branning (Scott Maslen), or pick her secret lover Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara).

These latest shenanigans follow four decades of TV that has hooked viewers since the very first episode aired on 19 February 1985. So let’s take a look at some of the show’s most shocking, explosive and poignant moments, as we raise a glass, Queen Vic style, to EastEnders at 40.

Cue the doofs…

Dirty Den’s divorce papers

You can’t talk about EastEnders’ biggest moments without mentioning Christmas 1986, when 30 million people tuned in to see the womanising Dirty Den serving wife Angie with divorce papers, after discovering she had been faking a terminal illness.

“Happy Christmas, Ange…”. Brutal. It remains the highest viewed soap episode in British history. Den was later shot and killed, or seemingly killed, by a man hiding in some daffodils, before returning from the dead. Only to be killed again.

Mark’s HIV

During the height of the HIV epidemic in the 1990s, Mark Fowler became the first mainstream British TV character to be diagnosed with HIV. EastEnders producers worked with the Terrence Higgins Trust charity to ensure his diagnosis and illness was portrayed accurately on screen.

The groundbreaking storyline was viewed by millions, helping to change attitudes about the virus when fear and misinformation was rife, the charity said. After leaving Walford in 2003, his family was informed of Mark’s death the following year.

Sharongate

People in soapland really need to learn not to spill all their darkest secrets when there are recording devices lying around. In 1994, the story of Sharon’s affair with Phil Mitchell, brother of her husband Grant, came out when Grant found her accidentally recorded confession – and subsequently played it to everyone in the Queen Vic, before beating Phil to a pulp. And it wasn’t even Christmas!

Tiffany’s death

Poor Tiffany. Did she not know marrying a Mitchell brother was never going to end well? On New Year’s Eve (like Christmas, a dangerous time) 1998, Tiffany was planning to leave with daughter Courtney while Grant was locked up on charges of attempting to murder her.

However, he got out. “Bail. Ever heard of it?” As Big Ben bonged, Grant left the Vic with Courtney, with Tiffany begging as she followed him. During a struggle, she was knocked over into the snow… and then Frank Butcher turned the corner in his car. RIP Tiff.

Ian marries Mel… but not for long

No one really believed it when glamorous Mel got together with odious Ian Beale. The victim of an unsuccessful attempt by his first wife Cindy to kill him via hitman, Ian was probably Walford’s most pathetic man. But Mel thought his daughter, Lucy, had cancer, so didn’t have the heart to walk away.

It wasn’t long before she discovered Ian had been lying, as he feared (quite rightly, to be fair) she didn’t love him. Following their New Year’s Eve wedding ahead of the new millennium, the fireworks popped and Big Ben bonged (again) as Mel walked out.

Pat, Peggy and Frank

One of EastEnders’ most famous love triangles, the tangled love lives of Pat, Peggy and Frank carried storylines for several years.

In the early 1990s, Frank and Pat were married – until he fled Walford after inadvertently causing the death of a homeless man killed in a fire at his car lot, started by Phil so Frank could claim on the insurance. Pat moved on with the more stable Roy Evans, while Frank found love with Peggy Mitchell.

But! Frank and Pat couldn’t hide their true feelings, and later started an affair – leading to one of the soap’s most memorable scenes when Frank showed up on Pat’s doorstep, naked except for a spinning bow tie and a grin. Frank later went on to fake his own death, while Pat also had an affair with Patrick Trueman – which occasionally involved pineapple rings and whipped cream, she revealed in one episode.

Sonia’s baby

For most people, having a baby shouldn’t come as a surprise, but that’s what happened to Sonia when, aged 15, she went from feeling a bit under the weather to giving birth to Martin Fowler’s baby in a matter of minutes. Baby Chloe (later Rebecca) was given up for adoption, but later returned to her birth parents and returned to Albert Square as a teenager in 2014.

Who shot Phil?

Here’s Phil again, this time round the victim of a whodunnit shooting. No longer simply a love rat, by the 2000s he had become one of the soap’s arch villains – and the mortal enemies had started to amass. Was it Mark Fowler, Ian Beale, Dan Sullivan or Steve Owen? Those who don’t know but are planning to catch up, look away now. Spoiler alert: it was his ex, Lisa Shaw. And don’t worry, Phil survived.

‘You aint my muvva!’

What a year for EastEnders. Just a few months later, this bombshell was revealed: Kat Slater was not, in fact, one of Zoe Slater’s big sisters, as she had grown up believing, but actually her mother. It all came out after an argument about Zoe going to Spain to live with her Uncle Harry, who had abused Kat as a teenager and was actually Zoe’s father.

Quite a lot to take in. The final seconds of the episode go down in EastEnders legend, with Zoe turning to scream at Kat. “You can’t tell me what to do, you aint my muvva!”… “Yes I am!”. Soap gold.

Little Mo hits Trevor with an iron

The physical and mental abuse of Little Mo by her manipulative husband Trevor was difficult to watch. The storyline came to a head at the end of 2001, starting with some particularly horrific scenes on Christmas Day. On New Year’s Eve, unable to take it anymore, she hit him over the head with an iron.

At first, Mo thought she had killed Trevor, but it wasn’t the case, and she later went to prison for attempted murder. After subsequently being released on appeal, Trevor later went on to hold her hostage and start a house fire – culminating in her rescue, and his death. Good riddance.

Death of Steve Owen

Played by Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet fame, Steve Owen became one of EastEnders’ most famous villains. Murder? His ex, Saskia – check. Burying the body in the woods and framing someone else for it? Check. Nemesis to the Mitchell brothers? Check. And dodgy dealings involving a nightclub? Check. (There’s always a nightclub).

Steve met his maker as he attempted to leave Walford with wife, Mel (formerly of Mel and Ian), along with Lisa and Mark, and Lisa’s daughter, Louise. But as Steve drove off with Louise in the car and Phil (Louise’s father) giving chase, he ended up crashing into a motorbike and a wall. He did do the right thing in the end, saving Louise by passing her out the window to Phil – but was engulfed as the car exploded into a fireball in March 2002.

Death of Dirty Den (again)

After Dirty Den’s return in 2003 (he had survived the 1989 shooting and been living in Spain), it wasn’t long before he started to make enemies once again. Trying to stop his son Dennis and adopted daughter Sharon’s relationship by getting Zoe pregnant and convincing her to pretend the baby was Dennis’s was the last straw for wife, Chrissie. Plus, Den also slept with Sam and conned her out of her share of the Vic.

This all culminated in Chrissie, Zoe and Sam confronting Den, with Zoe hitting him over the head with a doorstop – and Chrissie finishing off the job (unbeknownst to Zoe, but that’s another story). In true soap style, Den was buried in the pub’s cellar and concreted over. Nice.

‘If only he’d worn slip-on shoes’

Another iconic EastEnders villain, Janine Butcher was known for many evil deeds – but will always be best remembered for pushing newlywed husband Barry off a cliff during their honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands.

After calling him a mug, telling him their relationship was fake and she had married him for money, Barry half-slipped, was half-pushed – and Janine left him for dead. Afterwards, as she played the grieving widow, she gave the immortal line: “If only he’d worn slip-on shoes.”

Stacey and Max’s affair

Hot-headed Stacey Slater getting together with quiet Bradley Branning was yet another unlikely soap coupling. It seemed to work… until she went and spoiled it all by having an affair with his bad-boy father, Max. The scandal was exposed on Christmas Day 2007 when a kiss with Max – on her wedding day, for Gawd’s sake – was played out to the family after accidentally being caught on camera.

The couple split but reunited in 2009, only for their story to end in tragedy when Bradley fell to his death from a roof after becoming a prime suspect in the murder of wrong’un Archie Mitchell (another whodunnit storyline). Leading Stacey to confess to Max just seconds later that actually: “He didn’t do it… it was me.”

Dot Cotton’s monologue

Albert Square stalwart and chain-smoking hypochondriac Dot Cotton will be remembered for many memorable scenes and storylines, exploring complicated themes including euthanasia, when she helped Ethel die, cancer, and homophobia. Played by June Brown, Dot found happiness and wed Jim Branning in 2002, but it was her career-criminal son, Nick Cotton – or ‘Nasty Nick’ – who always ruled her heart.

Brown became the only soap actor to single-handedly lead an entire episode in 2008, when Dot reflected on her life as she recorded a message for Jim while he was in hospital recovering from a stroke. The performance earned her a BAFTA nomination.

Denise’s ‘death’

As we mentioned her earlier in reference to the 40th anniversary storylines this week, you might have realised that Denise is not dead. But for a short time in 2010, the residents of Albert Square believed she was – after her husband Lucas hid her in a basement and faked her suicide. There was a funeral and everything!

Mick discovers Shirley is his mum

Mick believed Shirley was his sister. Sound familiar? Yep, just like Zoe Slater, Mick discovered his sister was in fact his real mum – and on Christmas Day, of all times!

Who killed Lucy?

Another Beale, another whodunnit. This time it was Ian’s daughter Lucy at the centre of the story. Months after her death, her killer was revealed in a flashback episode to be… none other than her 10-year-old half-brother, Bobby. In other news for the Beales in 2015, Kathy Beale returned from the dead – yes, another one! No, she didn’t really die in that car crash in South Africa all those years ago. It was all an insurance scam, of course.

Peggy’s final scenes

As the Mitchell matriarch and the Queen Vic’s most beloved landlady, Peggy Mitchell is an EastEnders legend. Diagnosed with breast cancer, there was no explosion or dramatic car chase or big reveal, but instead one of the most poignant scenes in the soap’s history as Peggy chose to die on her own terms in 2016.

Visited by Pat from beyond the grave, following the character’s own death from cancer four years earlier, the pair reminisced and spoke about her choice. “I will go as I have lived,” she said. “Straight back, head held high, like a queen.”

Ronnie and Roxy drown

What’s more shocking than killing off one of the Square’s most famous sisters? Killing them both off at the same time. On New Year’s Day 2017, viewers watched as a drunk Roxy jumped into a closed swimming pool on the day of Ronnie’s second wedding to Jack. When she didn’t resurface, Ronnie jumped into save her, only to become weighed down by her wedding dress underwater – as Jack read Cinderella to the children.

Lola’s death

After being diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2022, Lola died in heartbreaking scenes the following year. Her death was the culmination of a storyline that involved a lot of work with brain cancer charities to ensure her illness and final days were portrayed realistically.

Danielle Harold, who played Lola, won the best leading performer at the British Soap Awards for her work on the storyline, just a week after her on-screen death.

EastEnders will mark its 40th anniversary with an hour-long special tonight, followed by a full live episode tomorrow