Eldorado (English: “The Golden”) is a British soap opera created by Tony Holland from an original idea by John Dark and Verity Lambert of a glamorous, upmarket soap focusing on wealthy British expatriates similar to US soaps Dallas and Dynasty. The show ran for only one year, from 6 July 1992 to 9 July 1993. Set in the fictional town of Los Barcos on the Costa Eldorado in Spain and following the lives of British and European expatriates, the BBC hoped it would be as successful as EastEnders and replicate some of the sunshine and glamour of imported Australian soaps such as Home and Away and Neighbours. A co-production between the BBC and independent production company Cinema Verity and J.Dark y J.Todesco, Eldorado aired three times a week in a high-profile evening slot on the mainstream channel BBC1, filling the slot vacated by Terry Wogan's chat show Wogan, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7.00 pm. In spite of a high-profile advertising campaign on television, radio and in the press preceding the launch ('Are you ready for Eldorado?', read by actor Campbell Morrison), the programme was not initially a popular hit with viewers or critics. Ratings improved with a radical overhaul, but it was eventually cancelled by the new controller of BBC1, Alan Yentob. Creation Eldorado was conceived originally from an idea by James Todesco, John Dark, and Verity Lambert, who pitched the show to EastEnders co-creators Tony Holland and Julia Smith. While Smith served as the series producer, Lambert was designated as the show's executive producer. At the time, Lambert had established her reputation as an in-house producer for the BBC, and had previously launched the BBC's successful science fiction television series Doctor Who. The original working title for the series was Little England. Problems and criticism Although the show featured many professional actors, such as Patricia Brake and Jesse Birdsall, many of the cast were inexperienced actors whose limitations were clearly exposed on such a new and ambitious project. German-born Kai Maurer had apparently never acted on stage or screen previously before being cast in the show. Prior to filming, some of the cast did not even know what a read-through was; the quality of the acting was derided by some tabloid newspapers and regularly mocked during the "film styles" round of comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway?. As a result of filming in bare-walled villas rather