EastEnders aired a highly-acclaimed set of episodes this week as Avani Nandra-Hart took centre stage in an emotional storyline.
The 15-year-old schoolgirl was left traumatised as she was detained at the local police station and strip-searched by two female officers, amid wrongful suspicions that she was carrying drugs.
Avani’s big scenes played out in a special single-storyline episode on Tuesday (March 25), while the aftermath was sensitively explored across the rest of the week.
With fans heaping praise on the impactful storyline, we’re taking a look at exactly what the show got so right. Here are six lessons that EastEnders and other soaps can learn from it in the future.
1. Know when to surprise fans
Soaps are fond of shouting loudly about their special episodes and important issue-based storylines ahead of time – and often rightly so. Pre-publicity surrounding sensitive plots can help to highlight real-life charities and sources of support, as well as giving viewers a choice over whether to watch potentially upsetting material.
In this case, though, EastEnders clearly benefited from not spoon-feeding every detail to viewers before the episode dropped. While Avani’s story had been mentioned in the spoilers for the week, there was no headline-grabbing press release or worthy producer quote spelling out exactly what would happen and how viewers should feel about it.
This meant that fans could be surprised by the single-story nature of Tuesday’s episode and just how powerful Avani’s scenes were as they unfolded without interruption.
Sometimes in Soapland, the best episodes are the ones where powerful scenes come completely out of the blue and this was certainly one such example.
2. Give new characters a chance to shine
Few fans would have put a special Avani episode on their EastEnders predictions list for 2025. Single-story editions are often reserved for the most well-known characters, so you’re a shoo-in for a special if you’re a Mitchell in EastEnders or a Dingle in Emmerdale.
This can sometimes be a self-defeating approach, though. Sure, giving the biggest characters lots of opportunity to shine is a great way to keep long-term viewers happy, but it can also mean that newer cast don’t get their chance to break through if they’re always on the reserve benches.
Rising stars Aaliyah James (Avani) and Sophie Khan Levy (Priya) blew fans away with their performances this week and the recent scenes are sure to elevate their positions in the show moving forwards.
3. Think outside the box
Soaps have been a staple on TV since Coronation Street launched nearly 65 years ago, so covering new ground with storylines can be tricky. From affairs to love triangles and serial killers, all of the soap staples have been seen before and there’s huge pressure on storyliners to put new spins on classic plots.
In the case of Avani’s story, though, EastEnders bosses have hit on a real-life issue which hasn’t been explored much on soaps before. (Although, by coincidence, a similar scene in a very different storyline aired in Netflix’s record-breaking series Adolescence this month.)
This is arguably EastEnders at its raw and gritty best, creating meaningful discussions among fans and raising awareness of a police practice that the general public may be unaware of.
In an online blog post this week, the Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, took the opportunity to highlight some key statistics. A 2024 report revealed that a child was strip searched by police in England and Wales every 14 hours between January 2018 and June 2023.
“Dramas like Adolescence and EastEnders have the power to highlight issues that plenty of people will be unaware of, bringing them into living rooms around the country and public conversations in a way that statistics alone cannot,” the Commissioner commented.
“The latest data suggests some signs of improvement, with lower numbers of strip-searches overall, especially in London – but the reality is that too many children are being subjected to the harrowing experience of being strip-searched.”
It’s also worth mentioning that there’s often high scrutiny from the media over the BBC’s output, so this EastEnders plot could have potentially sparked a backlash from some quarters for criticisms of real-life police procedures.
With EastEnders back to pushing the envelope rather than shying away from controversy, it was a bold risk from the bosses that paid off.
4. Give big moments room to breathe
There’s an often-quoted cliché that viewers have shorter attention spans these days, so shows must always be fast-moving and not dwell on anything for too long.
The success of Avani’s story shows that the opposite can still be true, though. EastEnders gave the story the screen time it deserved by letting it play out across the whole episode, rather than being interrupted by other stories.
EastEnders also made the right choice by showing the search of Avani in full. Camera angles and sensitive editing ensured a respectful approach, but it was still a highly uncomfortable yet necessary watch in order for the story to have its full impact.
A slower approach was also taken to Avani and Priya’s scenes back at home later on. Once again, the show didn’t cut away to other stories, providing more room for careful character detail and realistic moments which can sometimes be lost to the cutting room floor.
5. Let scenes be unpredictable
Priya took centre stage in the second half of the episode as she discovered her daughter’s ordeal and marched across the Square to confront Jack Branning over the way his police colleagues had behaved.
It was a raw and explosive scene, as the fiery character unleashed her fury and sparked chaos on the Square.
On-screen clashes like these can sometimes seem too clean and orchestrated in modern day soaps, yet this felt much more real and not overly rehearsed.
While EastEnders stars haven’t spoken in depth about the filming of this episode, we do wonder whether there was an element of just letting the cast be “in the moment” here which took the scene to a different level.
6. Remember the aftermath and the community feel
A strong community feel has been a key strength of EastEnders for a while now, with more natural character interactions and crossovers over the past couple of years.
In this case, it was great to see how a story naturally affected the adult and teen characters alike, bringing in a wide range of Walford residents like Avani, Priya, Ravi, Suki, Jack, Amy, Lily, Jean and Eve.
The story has created possibilities to explore Avani, Priya and Ravi’s family unit in more detail from now on. Fans have often called to see more of them in the past year or so, but they were sometimes overshadowed by the long-running chaos involving Nish and the other Panesars.
The results of Denise’s “love triangle” public vote have left the door open for the show to reunite Priya and Ravi in the future, so it’ll be interesting to see if the storyliners take up this opportunity anytime soon…
