Scroll down for the spoiler!

This is an old bit of work which I’ve resurrected and smartened up a bit for you.

It’s a handy style of visualization for people like me who don’t always have the time to watch episodes of Eastenders in full*, and prefer a synopsis version instead.

It’s a word cloud from the script of the live episode broadcast on February 20th 2015 – the reveal who killed Lucy episode (spoiler: If you don’t know yet, it’s all rather ridiculous), and hopefully sums up the plot rather succinctly.

Method

The script was handily published on the BBC’s Writers Room web site.

First the text required a bit of editing to take out all the directorial bits (e.g. wide shot of Shrimpy and Marie miming a coffee order), actor cues (whatever you do, don’t call Ian Beale “Adam” this time) and so on.

Then I went to wordclouds.com, pasted the text in and the site did the rest. For added effect I gave it an image mask file with the Thames masked out, as per the classic EE ident. The resulting image needed just one tiny bit of custom colouring in – to reveal the whodunnit – and that was it..

As a bonus I created the second version to act as the intro image at the top of the page.

In this modern age where both free time and attention spans are equally limited for people, maybe all TV should be delivered this way?

* By the way, if you do have time, by far the best way to watch an Eastenders episode live is to put the telly on in the background, then read the live twitter feed for #eastenders instead – it’s sooo much more entertaining that way!