After three months following the original format of gritty, hard-hitting storylines, extremely poor ratings proved that this approach was not working. The series was churning through storylines at such a fast pace it was hard for viewers to keep up. Characters are introduced through the most tenuous of links with the regulars, but then disappeared at the end of their storyline, often with open-ended or unsatisfactory conclusions. The reliance on guest-characters created a lack of continuity, very few cliffhangers, and little for viewers to come back for. The peripheral regular cast were given very little to do except support the guest characters who came in, played out, and then concluded their story arc, which made the regular characters seem two-dimensional. The serialised soap-drama hybrid which made "A Country Practice" so successful was under-pinned by the strong support cast involved in their own ongoing dramas and this was evidently missing in the very early episodes of "E Street". Executive producer Forrest Redlich and series producer Denis Phelan recognised these shortcomings early on and immediately began to make radical changes to every aspect of the fledgling series. Forrest Redlich commented at the time: