A former EastEnders chief scriptwriter has criticised the BBC’s plans to make five episodes of the soap a week.

Tony Jordan told The Stage the soap was already in “the doldrums” since production of the show increased from two episodes to four episodes a week.

"Was it a better show when it was twice a week? Absolutely - without a shadow of a doubt.”

"The reason for that is because they were shooting just an hour's worth of television and had time to spend on each individual episode.

"If you are producing two-and-a-half hours a week television, it's basically a movie a week, and some things suffer.”

Jordan left the soap in February after 18 years on the show and now works on new BBC1 police show Holby Blue. He acted as EastEnders series consultant as well as chief scriptwriter.

Despite his concerns, Jordan said he expected the show would bounce back.

"EastEnders is going through the doldrums a little but lately, but the one thing about EastEnders is it will always come back because there's a great team of people working on it."

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