Nothing drags in the bloated post-lunch Christmas viewer like an Eastenders special. Every year they dish up a hefty serving of misery, pain and violence and every year, millions of people are left choking on their Milk Tray in horrified delight.

Well I think I’ve figured out the recipe for their annual ratings success. The Eastenders Christmas special contains all the basic elements of a classic dramatic model. The Greek tragedy: ‘a form of art based on human suffering that paradoxically offers its audience pleasure’. Sound familiar? There's more...

Greek tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honour of the god Dionysus.

The Eastenders Christmas Special is performed in late December at an annual state religious festival in honour of the god Consumerism

Tragedy depicts the downfall of a noble hero or heroine, usually through some combination of hubris, fate, and the will of the gods.

In most recent years, the role of noble hero or heroine has been shouldered by Bradley and Tanya Branning (who found out Stacey was sleeping with Max), and Sean Slater and Roxy Mitchell (the former discovering he wasn’t in fact the father of the latter’s baby, despite her powerful wish to make it so). Hubris and fate are Eastenders staples, everybody gets their comeuppance at Christmas, although Dot Cotton is probably the only one who will cite the hand of God as the cause. Everybody else usually finds a friend or relative to lay the blame with.

The tragic hero's powerful wish to achieve some goal inevitably encounters limits, usually those of human frailty (flaws in reason, hubris, society), the gods (through oracles, prophets, fate), or nature.

‘This is going to be the best Christmas ever’ announced Billy Mitchell, shortly before finding out the kiddy winks were going up north with his ex-wife, and he’d be spending it in the company of moody foster son Jay, who can suck the joy out of any situation with one exasperated teenage breath. All our tragic heroes ever wish to achieve is a place at a lovely family gathering - shop-bought mince pies, mulled lager. Yet thanks to the disproportionate amounts of human frailty nestling within Walford society, this goal is seldom achieved, and they usually end up alone, sobbing next to the up-turned tree.

Many ancient Greek tragedians employed the ekkyklêma as a theatrical device, which was a cart hidden behind the scenery which could be rolled out to display the aftermath of some event which had happened out of sight of the audience. This event was frequently a brutal murder of some sort, an act of violence which could not be effectively portrayed visually, but an action of which the other characters must see the effects in order for it to have meaning and emotional resonance.

Cast your mind back. Can you actually remember an Eastenders Christmas which didn’t feature a brutal murder or act of violence? Peggy taking a baseball bat to the Vic. Pauline being bumped off on the snow-clad bench that had been purchased in honour of her late husband (oh writers, with such irony you are really spoiling us). And the BBC will never allow said act to actually be shown in full.

So there you have it.

Conveniently avoiding the fact that Greek tragedies were accompanied by a chorus, and a few other miscellaneous details like the all-male cast, I think it’s safe to conclude that the writers have been skim reading the works of Sophocles. And that’s how they manage to reel so many of us in and destroy our ‘ho ho ho’ every single year.

It’d be very interesting to pitch an actual Greek tragedy against an episode of Eastenders and see which came out on top, ratings wise. In fact, that’s pretty much all I want for Christmas right about now…