Clyde Tavernier
| Clyde Tavernier | |
|---|---|
| EastEnders character | |
Gidea Thompson |
Clyde Tavernier is a fictional character from the
Storylines
Backstory
Clyde was the first-born son to
1990–1993
Clyde moves to Albert Square in July 1990 with his family. Clyde gets a job working in
Clyde discovers Eddie's bloody body in the square and unwittingly picks up the knife that has been used to kill him. Panicking, Clyde leaves the scene and disposes of the murder weapon, but is seen by the real murderer,
Creation and development
In the latter part of 1989, Michael Ferguson became the new executive producer of EastEnders, taking over from Mike Gibbon. Ferguson had previously been a producer on ITV's The Bill – a hard-hitting, gritty and successful police drama, which seemed to be challenging EastEnders in providing a realistic vision of modern life in London. Due to his success on The Bill, Peter Cregeen, the Head of Series at the BBC, poached Ferguson to become the executive producer of EastEnders.[2]
Following a relatively unsuccessful inclination towards comic storylines throughout 1989, Ferguson decided to take the soap in a new direction in 1990. Big changes were implemented both off-screen and on-screen.[2] Ferguson altered the way the episodes were produced, changed the way the storylines were conceptualised and introduced a far greater amount of location work than had previously been seen. EastEnders scriptwriter Colin Brake said that it was a challenging period, but "the results on-screen were a programme with a new sense of vitality, and a programme more in touch with the real world than it had been for a while".[2]
As a consequence of these changes, a large number of characters were axed in early 1990 as the new production machine cleared way for a new direction and new characters.
It took a long time to cast the complete Tavernier family. Once EastEnders became a success, the producers had no difficulties in finding "good actors" who wanted to join the cast; however, what became hard was finding families—combinations of performers who "look and sound as though they could be related."[3] According to producers Corinne Hollingworth and Pat Sandys, the Taveriner family were especially difficult as four generations of the family were being featured. Hollingworth has commented "The most difficult job we've had was finding six black actors who fitted the bill for the Tavernier family. Here we needed two teenagers who looked around fifteen but were actually older, had left school and had mature attitudes to work. They had to love music, hanging around in tracksuits and most important, they had to look as if they could be twins. And for Clyde, we needed someone who looked as though he'd been a boxer but also seemed thoughtful."[3]
Author Hilary Kingsley described Clyde as someone who "has never accepted that black people have to tolerate prejudice without protest." She added that "Clyde has good reason to feel bitter, thanks to years of being harassed by the police. Yet he had never broken the law".[3] She suggested that he was a character "who sometimes lacked sense.".[3] Rupert Smith has classified Clyde as a "poster boy" the type of character whose principal purpose "seems to be to please the show's sizeable straight female and gay audience".[4] Woodcock was a keen boxer, and this was utilised on-screen in 1991, when Clyde took up the sport.[3] Smith has claimed that this gave the programme-makers the opportunity to allow Clyde to take his shirt off on-screen, which according to Smith, "he did at the drop of a hat".[4]
Clyde's most prominent storyline surrounded his seeming involvement in the murder of publican
Clyde's time in the soap came to an end in July 1993. The Independent reported that the character was being written out of EastEnders. Clyde was one of several characters to be written out that year in what the press dubbed the "Albert Square Massacre".[6] Clyde was given a happy ending on-screen; he departed after falling in love with a second cousin, and moved to live in Trinidad.
Reception
Writer Rupert Smith has suggested that Clyde's purpose was "almost entirely decorative" and that Clyde had little else to do in EastEnders except take his clothes off, other than to "dally improbably with Michelle and to do the odd bit of kidnapping."[4] In the 1992 book Come on down?: popular media culture in post-war Britain, the authors have referenced Clyde and the rest of the Tavernier family as non-white characters who appeared to have been integrated into part of the predominantly white communal setting of the soap. However, they suggested that this attempt at inclusion "is the single clue to an understanding of why EastEnders is a development of an old form of representation of working-class life. The ethnic minority households are accepted in the working-class community, but the black, white and Asian families remain culturally distinct." They suggested that there was no attempt to portray hybridity between black-white cultures.[7]
Robert Clyde Allen has discussed the Tavernier family in his 1995 book To be continued--: soap operas around the world. He suggested that black characters in EastEnders were incorporated into the working-class culture of the soap as opposed to offering something different from it. He noted that the Taverniers, the focus of black characters in the early 1990s, for a while had the same mixture of generations and attitudes that characterized the Fowlers, one of the soap's core white families who had a dominant position in the series. However he stated that "somewhat typically [...] the family broke up".[8]
References
- ^ "EastEnders at 15: tragic moments; 1991-1993". Sunday Mail. 16 April 2000. Retrieved 16 September 2009.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-563-37057-4.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-563-36292-0.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-563-52165-5.
- ^ "EastEnders". EastEnders. 14 November 1991. BBC. BBC1.
- ^ "Tabloid TV". The Independent. London. 30 March 1993. Retrieved 16 September 2009.
- ISBN 978-0-415-06327-2.
- ISBN 978-0-415-11007-5.