Fuller enlists EastEnders veteran for US soap project

Tony Jordan, the veteran EastEnders writer who dreamed up the Slaters and has scripted many of the BBC1 show's most memorable episodes, is developing a soap for US TV with pop svengali Simon Fuller.

The secret project is believed to be one of the things that persuaded Mal Young, the ultimate boss of EastEnders, to quit the BBC and join Fuller's 19 Management.

The new soap will be based around a square in Chicago and will focus on the lives of a group of blue collar American families.

Speculation that storylines in EastEnders will creep into the US soap will be inevitable given Mr Jordan's long association with the soap.

Mr Jordan, a former market stallholder, wrote the first of more than 250 episodes for EastEnders in 1989.

Since then he has been responsible for many of Albert Square's most memorable storylines, including the deaths of Arthur Fowler and Ethel, Sharongate, and more recently Kat's revelation to Zoe that she is her mother not her sister, and the Andy-Kat-Alfie love triangle.

The EastEnders lead writer and story consultant is a freelance, so he is free to work on other projects, and earlier this year was one of the team responsible for the scripts for BBC1 con artist drama Hustle.

Together with Mr Young, who is joining 19 Management in December to set up a drama department, they will be looking for an opportunity in the US to reinvent the soap opera, in the same way he reinvigorated the moribund talent show format with Pop Idol.

In America, there are no prime time soaps to compare with EastEnders and Coronation Street, which have been the staple of BBC1 and ITV for decades.

"The nearest they get to EastEnders or Coronation Street is Roseanne or the daytime soaps. But really soap is like a dirty word for viewers," said one source.

Although Dallas, Dynasty and Falcon's Crest, which were huge in the 1980s - the Who Shot JR? storyline was watched by more than 300 million around the world - nothing has come close to their success in the 90s or so far this century.

Nowadays in the US soaps are seen as something of a joke, with shows such as Days of Our Lives and Sunset Beach broadcast in daytime and regarded as kitsch TV, renowned for their ropey acting and unbelievable plot twists.

· The BBC is considering splitting Mal Young's jobs into two - with one new executive responsible for the four year-round series and serials - EastEnders, Casualty, Holby City and daytime soap Doctors.

That would mean a second executive would be responsible for the long-running series he was responsible for, including Silent Witness, Judge John Deedes and Waking the Dead.

