Chess on Eastenders!

It was a typical dull November day. An email arrived from a researcher at the BBC wondering whether Borehamwood Chess Club might know of anyone who would be willing to devise chess board set-ups for a soap opera? Yes - me! But, the cynic did not get his hopes up as odds on it was likely to be a spam email. Who asks for a copy of your passport photo and National Insurance number in a chatty follow-up email? To my surprise, it turned out that the request was genuine. The program was Eastenders, and Ted (Christopher Timothy) was to be playing chess with some teenage characters for a bit of inter-generational bonding. In my mind, Christopher Timothy is James Herriot in 'All Creatures Great and Small'. But that was over 25 years ago. Time flies. Ted has had his own shenanigans with a gun a few months ago. But now, his prowess at chess would presumably provide some light heart interludes between affairs, rows and heists. That is how the journey began.

In case you are curious, there are numerous on-line articles and blogs dedicated to chess in TV and Films . Digital curators lovingly record every single incidence of broadcast chess. In particular, scenes where the board is set up incorrectly are the holy grail. In the 1936 film, Pennies from Heaven, Bing Crosby was playing chess with Edith Fellows.The board was set up wrongly. Completely ruined the film. On twitter, @chesspolice and other twitterati highlight various crime against chess, such as 2 kings on adjacent squares in a corporate advertisement. Legendary chess scenes in films like the Thomas Crown affair (Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway,1968 - well worth watching) and Kronstein in 'From Russia With Love', were based on actual master games. In other famous films, like 'Back to The Future 3', the production team did not bother to pay a chess player a few dollars to set up a legal position.

My self imposed remit was to try and produce 'realistic' positions typical of beginners and occasional woodpushers. The scripts provided a description of a short sequences of piece names or scenarios. Sometimes they included a brief narrative. A remark by a player, hand hovering over a piece etc. Some checks and checkmates. 

As Eastenders is filmed locally in Borehamwood, I visited the BBC Elstree Studios to provide ID and other personal information. Fortunately, there was no filming at that time, so I also enjoyed an impromptu personal tour of the iconic soap set. A causal walk past Ian Beale's chip shop, Walford station (with its oyster card gates) and the Old Vic. All the fruit and veg on the market stall was fresh. No selfies allowed to be posted on social media.

A bit of internet research shows that chess featured briefly on Eastenders in 2015 when Buster Briggs had a game with Vincent Hubbard. Buster is clearly being checkmated in the picture below, and he left Walford a year later. Not sure if the two events were in any way connected, but at least the board was set up correctly. The character Felix Kawalski (played by Harry Landis) used to play chess in the Old Vic over 20 years ago. He would play with Jules, and once got angry when Jules keeled over during forty winks, scattering the chess pieces in the process. One witnesses the occasional dramatic coffee spillage and pressing the wrong clock, but yet to experience an opponent nod off.

There are a number of ways of creating chess positions. For a particular one sided win against a beginner, I played through an imaginary game from the beginning to arrive at a board position that met the script requirements. For another scene, a position and idea borrowed from an actual game, altered a bit. Perhaps remove a piece here, double a pawn there. Chess sources and classic themes were mixed up so that every position looked different.  One could use pretty much anything as a starting point, with the probable exception of the famous (copyrighted) Harry Potter position.

Some games were started from the beginning. Once, I submitted the first 4 moves of a very common opening, and those same 4 moves were played later that week in a game between 2 ex world champs, Anand v Kramnik in Wijk aan Zee, Netherlands, at the Tata Steel Chess 2018 Round 7. No more spoilers here!


To provide the moves to match the scenes, free online software was available to create jpegs of chess positions. The software also offers arrows to indicate moves, and circles perhaps for hands hovering over pieces. I told the BBC that the white square is always in the bottom right corner, and the Queen starts on her own colour. So if any boards are not set up correctly, my plea is 'not guilty'.