Get Johnny Week

"Get Johnny Week" is a week-long storyline in the BBC soap opera EastEnders, which was first screened at the end of March 2006. The storyline refers to the character of Johnny Allen (Billy Murray), and also features the characters of Ruby Allen (Louisa Lytton), Grant (Ross Kemp) and Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden), and Jake (Joel Beckett) and Danny Moon (Jake Maskall).

"Get Johnny Week" is an EastEnders storyline that reunited the popular characters Phil and Grant Mitchell (aka the Mitchell brothers) in 2006. Actor Ross Kemp, who played Grant continuously from 1990 to 1999, was persuaded to return to EastEnders for a three-month period in the spring of 2006 and "Get Johnny Week" was the storyline that marked his return.

The storyline saw the Mitchell brothers embroiled in a revenge bid against the gangster Johnny Allen. It was dubbed "Get Johnny Week" by the programme makers, and the storyline was featured heavily in a BBC advertising campaign before and during the airing of the storyline.

The beginning of the storyline saw a stark personality change in the character of Grant. Typically the more volatile and aggressive of the two brothers, in his absence from the show Grant had become a more diplomatic "peacemaker"; traits that were previously seen more commonly in the character Phil. Actor Ross Kemp has commented on his character's personality change: "Grant tells Phil that, while he was in Brazil, he had therapy, so he becomes an amateur psychiatrist for a couple of episodes. Then, he reverts to his true form of thumping everyone!...Grant's like Phil and Phil's like Grant this week. Grant becomes the more careful and meticulous one, while Phil's the hot-headed brother for a change."

Grant's personality change prompted criticism, with one reviewer branding the character's "new touchy feely attitude to life" as "implausible". Another commented "This new unimproved family-friendly "come on give me a hug" Grant gives me the creeps. In just one crazed week the demented EastEnders scriptwriters undermined TV's top tough guy to such a profound extent that I can't see how he'll ever recover. With Phil and Grant reunited for the first time in six months, we were all looking forward to some classic Mitchell mayhem. In fact we had a right to expect carnage from the terrible twins. But what did we get? Grant's nauseating revelation that he underwent therapy to stop being so violent and antisocial."

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