User:Kelvin 101/Ricky & Bianca

"Ricky & Bianca" is a spin-off episode in two parts of the British television soap opera EastEnders, broadcast on BBC One on 13 and 20 May 2002. The spin-off features the EastEnders charaacters Bianca Jackson (Patsy Palmer) and Ricky Butcher (Sid Owen). It is set nearly three years after Bianca's departure in 1999 and is a lead-up to Ricky's return to EastEnders later that year as a regular character.

Part one
Ricky reunites with his former wife Bianca and son Liam Butcher in Manchester. Bianca has been in Manchester studying for an arts degree for the past two-and-a-half years and is struggling to look after Liam. Ricky discovers she has been working in a nightclub and has stolen money from the manager, Vince. Ricky ends up getting caught in the middle of all of this along with his new girlfriend, Cassie.

Part two
After he gets Bianca out of trouble, Ricky and Bianca have a one-night stand (it is revealed many years later that Bianca conceived a daughter, Tiffany Butcher). Ricky tells Cassie he does not really love her and is still in love with Bianca. Cassie manipulates Bianca into thinking that she and Ricky could never be happy together, and Bianca makes the difficult decision to leave Liam with Ricky, feeling that he will be a better parent than she is, and leaves in a taxi.

Cast and characters

 * Patsy Palmer as Bianca
 * Sid Owen as Ricky
 * Mitchell Vaughn and Gavin Vaughn as Liam
 * Sally Ann Triplet as Cassie
 * Craig Charles as Vince
 * Nicola Murphy as Gail
 * Robert Shaw Cameron as Gerry
 * Conor Alexander as Kumar
 * Dean Andrews as Dean
 * Damian Christian as Brian
 * Steven Finch as David
 * Kate Ford as Sophie
 * Joanne Gerrard as Moira
 * Meryl Hampton as Mrs Burrows
 * Lisa Rigby as Debbie

Production
On 27 January 2002, it was announced that Palmer, who left EastEnders in 1999, and Owen, who left in 2000, had filmed a one-off return to EastEnders for an hour-long special, which was filmed in Manchester. It was originally planned to air over the Christmas period in 2001 but filming was delayed due to Palmer's pregnancy, and it was not shown until May 2002. The spin-off or "soap bubble" was part of plans by Mal Young, the BBC controller of drama serials, to expand the EastEnders brand.

Reception
Official ratings from the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board showed that part one gained 11.04 million viewers and part two gained 8.58 million viewers.

Nancy Banks-Smith of the The Guardian described the episodes as, "A cynical way of shooing Ricky back into Albert Square. [...] These let's-do-the-show-somewhere-else specials tend to be tiresome. This one seems to be a way of easing Ricky back into EastEnders. Pete Shelley of the Daily Mirror said, "A shot of a pasty-faced, grumpy-looking orang-utan told us that this episode marked the return of Bianca... I won't bore you with the details of Simon Ashdown's plot, suffice to say that it was worthy of a Brookside Christmas video starring Lindsey Corkhill." Simon Edge of the Daily Express said "EastEnders spin-offs usually set off the cringe alarm. But this one is a hoot, mainly because Patsy Palmer is sending herself up something rotten - normally only drag queens can manage a falsetto squeal that high—and because she and Sid Owen look so pleased to be there."

Palmer said in an interview in 2005 that she had no desire to return to EastEnders and said, "I think that brief spin-off of a storyline for Ricky and Bianca was a double-edged sword. On one hand, I don't think we should ever have done it, it was a mistake on my behalf. But on the other, it convinced me that Bianca was someone that I did not want to see again. She was past history as far as I was concerned, I certainly learned that."

In 2006, Tina Baker, for GMTV opined, "The Ricky And Bianca spin-off didn't quite work, It just wasn't quite as good as when they were in Albert Square with all the other characters. It's a bit of a danger when characters have already left the soap and then they return in a spin-off."

In an interview in 2008, Kara Tointon said, "When they had the one off spin-off of Ricky & Bianca in Manchester. I just remember a big buzz around my school and everyone was going to tune in and it was really nice to see the people I'd grown up with because you do often think of what certain characters are doing and it was really lovely but it wasn't happy for them was it, which is a shame."

In 2017, Michael Hogan from The Daily Telegraph called "Ricky & Bianca" a "romcom caper", while Steven Murphy, editor of Inside Soap, talking about soap opera spin-offs in general, said "you don't often find that 'Ricky and Bianca in Manchester' [is] in people's top 10 soap moments."