Who Killed Archie?

"Who Killed Archie?" is a storyline from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, which began on 25 December 2009, Christmas Day, when the character Archie Mitchell, played by Larry Lamb, was murdered by an unseen person. Events leading up to and following the murder put several characters in the frame, in the style of a whodunnit mystery. The culprit was kept a tight secret within the production crew as well, with only seven people knowing the identity of the killer. The murderer was revealed as Stacey Branning (Lacey Turner) during a live episode titled "EastEnders Live", broadcast on 19 February 2010, the show's 25th anniversary. Turner was told thirty minutes before the broadcast that Stacey was the killer, and actors rehearsed several possible endings. Finally, a two-hander episode between Stacey and Max on 26 March 2010 explained how she killed Archie.

The storyline was created in spring 2009 during a story conference, where executive producer Diederick Santer, storyliner Dominic Treadwell-Collins, series consultant and lead writer Simon Ashdown, series producer Lorraine Newman, script producer Sharon Batten, and Controller of BBC Drama Production John Yorke were considering what to do for the Christmas Day 2009 and 25th anniversary episodes. They discussed the character Archie Mitchell and how everyone hated him, and decided on a storyline with characters' hatred and anger towards Archie building up before Christmas, with a peak on Christmas Day when he is killed and another for the reveal on the 19 February 2010 anniversary. They decided to keep the killer's identity a secret within the small group and decided to reveal it during a live episode so that the secret could be kept for as long as possible, and managed the story on a need-to-know basis. The live episode's director, Clive Arnold, became the seventh person to discover the identity of the murderer. They went through the characters to decide who would create a "shiver" moment, and decided against Janine, even though she could have done it, because she has killed before. The killer was going to be Archie's wife Peggy Mitchell (Barbara Windsor), until producers discovered Windsor had planned to leave the show, so they decided on Stacey. Although scripts initially diverted attention away from Stacey, Santer realised that drawing attention away from her too much might make it more apparent.

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