EastEnders to air earlier as BBC changes TV schedule over bank holiday
The episode will be bumped up to make way for Tim Burton's Dumbo.
It’s the Easter weekend, and as people across the UK enjoy the four-day Bank Holiday weekend, they will have to adjust their TV viewing plans somewhat as there has been a change to the schedule.
For fans of EastEnders, the episode airing on Easter Monday, 21st April, will no longer be airing in its usual timeslot of 7:30pm.
Instead, the episode will air at 6:50pm, to make way for the TV premiere of Tim Burton’s live-action Dumbo remake from 2019.
Looking at the wider BBC One schedule, The One Show will air at 6:25pm, followed by EastEnders and Dumbo, with a new episode of Paddy and Chris: Road Tripping airing straight afterwards at 9pm. EastEnders will move back to its usual 7:30pm slot on Tuesday.
The official synopsis for Monday’s episode of EastEnders says: “Nigel spies an opportunity to prove himself, a request from Junior leaves Teddy with few options, and Priya does her best to lift Avani’s spirits.”
It’s been a dramatic time on EastEnders of late, with Natalie Cassidy’s Sonia departing the square just weeks after the huge events of the show’s 40th anniversary, in which James Bye’s Martin lost his life.
The anniversary celebrations were marked in a number of ways, including with a return from Ross Kemp, who recently admitted his two-week stint back on the show left him “slightly fried”.
He said: “It was wonderful, but you come away from it slightly fried. Grant comes back and within a minute he’s fighting, he’s crying, he’s making love, then he’s crying about it, then he’s fighting again. He’s never just sat in the launderette.
“The first scene in the anniversary was me breaking into the Arches and wrestling a Beretta 9mm off my brother, so it wasn’t like going to the café and saying, ‘Can I have a bacon roll, please?’.
“I think a part of me is Grant, and part of Grant is me. It was great to put the leather jacket on again, and also a relief that I could still get in it!”
EastEnders airs Monday to Thursday at 7:30pm on BBC One and from 6am on BBC iPlayer.