EastEnders criticised over police portrayal

EastEnders has been slammed for the way detectives were portrayed in its recent Who Killed Archie? storyline.

In recent week's, viewers have seen Walford detectives DCI Jill Marsden (Sophie Stanton, pictured) and DC Wayne Hughes (Jamie Treacher) chatting to locals while investigating the murder case.

Hughes has also been seen accepting a bribe from Jack Branning (Scott Maslen).

But real-life detectives fear that such behaviour made them look 'unprofessional', according to The Telegraph.

Alan Kalbfell, a Detective Inspector with the City of London police and speaking on behalf of the National Detectives Forum, said: "It is frustrating to see our trade portrayed in such a bad manner.

"EastEnders is watched by a broad range of people, from young to old, and they will think this is how detectives operate. It's not. There is no doubt this is damaging to our profession.

"There is no way that 99.9 per cent of people doing our job would dream off discussing an ongoing case with people on the street if it could prove detrimental to the case.

"Yet EastEnders have no problem showing this. It makes us look unprofessional."

Almost 17 million viewers watched EastEnders' live episode on Friday night, in which Stacey Branning confessed to killing Archie.

A EastEnders spokeswoman apologised to real-life detectives, saying: "I'm sorry if we have offended real-life detectives but this is heightened fiction and all the things that we show might not always represent real life.

The spokeswoman added: "We always have a police consultant on shows like this that we go to before casting."

Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk's weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop