Juliet England: EastEnders ‘silent’ episode TV review

Back in the Eighties, I watched EastEnders at boarding school without a subtitle in sight. It was the era of Dirty Den, of Angie, Lofty and Michelle, and on a Thursday night when it came as a double bill with Top of the Pops, the TV room would be packed. Happy days.

In the three and a half decades since, I’ve seen the show sporadically, although not in the last couple of years.

So I was intrigued to revisit Albert Square on Monday night and watch an episode filmed entirely from the point of view of the character Ben Mitchell, left partially deaf after a boat accident on the Thames. He is played by Max Bowden, apparently the sixth actor to take on the role of a guy still in his mid-twenties. (I do have vague memories of a very young Ben, with hearing aids, when grandma Peggy ‘Get Outta Mah Pub’ Mitchell was still around.)

Although I couldn’t notice, given my own hearing loss, audio levels were reduced for the whole ep, while if anyone spoke to Ben, those words flashed up on screen in fragments, not always at a speed to be read comfortably.

Sound was thrust centre stage, and although I had to make do with subtitles saying for example ‘loud whoosh’ as the coffee machine in Kaff’s caff (is it still called that?) spat and hissed, I related to it and could see how it would show a hearing person what it’s like when such noises interfere with comprehension. At one point, Ben is nearly run over after not hearing a truck going past. The programme also did well in conveying the maddening whining of hearing aids.

I don’t know what a hearing person would have made of the 30 minutes. But I think it effectively demonstrated the frustrations of missing words, of partially catching things.

From the point of view of a subtitles user, it was sometimes disorientating and confusing trying to read two sets of captions. But, then again, the episode wasn’t aimed at people like me.

I was also plunged straight back into the drama after a lengthy absence, although there were some familiar faces – soap, sorry, continuing drama – actors always seem to return to the original scene of their crimes. So, with those flashing captions especially, it wasn’t always easy to work out exactly what was going on.

Anyway. As the instalment starts, Ben wakes up with his small daughter jumping on his bed. We’ve all had that weird, underwater feeling of not being able to hear as we grope for our hearing aids first thing, so that was well done.

We follow Ben throughout his day, which at one point seemed to jump from morning to half seven at night with startling speed.

Of course, it wouldn’t be EastEnders without a high-speed police car chase, a lot of shouting in a garage/workshop (Ben and Lola arguing about whether she did or didn’t sleep with someone called Peter, at which point I rather lost track of proceedings, but all standard soap fare), and a shoo’er.

The episode had all of these. On the evening of the day in question, Ben follows his dad, Walford hardman Phil Mitchell, on some sort of dodgy crime job.

I’ve since read up on this and found out that Ben did so because he knew it was a trap, and his dad was being framed for murder. I did get that Phil had earlier taken his son through the details of the job, but then became so exasperated at his boy’s inability to hear that he suggested he sit this one out, even after Ben brandished the shoo’er to prove his worthiness of the Mitchell family name. Deafness even unfairly affects your work when it’s not strictly legit, or indeed in any way legit.

At the warehouse that’s the scene of the dodgy job, gangster Danny Hardcastle is so maddened by Ben not hearing him he fires his gun by his good ear, leaving him completely deaf. At one point, he calls him a ‘freak’. Horrible, but also horribly familiar, realistic and powerful.

Ben and Phil eventually make good their escape in a motor with a nice stash of cash, shrugging off the Old Bill en route.

Say what you like about soaps, but they reach a lot of people (on average five million per ep for ‘Enders) and they certainly do their homework. (Two decades ago when I worked in the press office of a dyslexia charity, someone from the show called up for information when making the character Martin Fowler dyslexic.) Here, the team worked closely with deaf scriptwriter Charlie Swinbourne (also the Limping Chicken’s editor, he was Story Consultant on this episode) and the charity National Deaf Children’s Society in putting together the episode.

And the hard work seems to have paid off in terms of approval from viewers, one of whom tweeted:

“If you want to tell a story of how someone copes with a disability, THAT is how you do it.”

Another wrote:

“That was such a hard episode to watch, I’m glad they did it from Ben’s perspective, but it made me emotional knowing that that’s how it is for us deaf/HoH”.

And indeed there was something very watertight about the whole half-hour, which combined dramatic action with a strong deaf awareness message in a powerful, realistic and unique way. Sometimes, soaps can cut through in a way other media can’t. Hats off.