Julia Cuthbert Smith (26 May 1927 – 19 June 1997) was an English television director and producer. She is best known for being the co-creator (along with Tony Holland) of the BBC soap opera EastEnders, also working as a director and the first producer of the series. Early career London-born Smith became involved in television production when she directed the series Suspense in 1962. She went on to direct popular BBC shows such as Z-Cars (in 1962) and Doctor Who (in 1966 and 1967), for which she directed the stories The Smugglers and The Underwater Menace. In 1967 she directed an adaptation of The Railway Children with Jenny Agutter that was successful enough for it to lead to the fondly remembered 1970 film in which Agutter reprised her role of Roberta. While working on Z Cars she had met Tony Holland, who was a writer for the show. The two of them became an established producer/script-editor team and went on to work for the BBC's long-running hospital drama Angels (1975) from 1979 to 1983. EastEnders In 1983 the BBC contacted Smith and Holland to create a new popular bi-weekly serial drama. Two ideas were given to them, one about a caravan site, the other about a shopping arcade. Neither of them liked either of the ideas and demanded to be able to create something about what they knew—in the words of Smith—"London - today!" Together they came up with the idea of a serial set in the East End of London in a Victorian Square. When casting for the show, Smith had the guideline 'Only genuine Eastenders need apply'; it was this that gave her the idea for the name of the show, which would be called EastEnders after other names were rejected. Originally the show was to be called Eastenders, but Jonathan Powell, then Head of Drama at the BBC who had commissioned the show, made the tentative suggestion that the second "e" didn't look good on paper, and said that perhaps it should be capitalized. It was, for which Smith later said "...we were eternally grateful to him!" Traditionally, the end music to EastEnders begins with dramatic drums, but occasionally, especially when a character departs, a piano introduction is used. This is called Julia's Theme, after Julia Smith. Her final contribution to EastEnders, along with that of fellow creator Tony Holland, came in early 1989, amid a dispute