Square of Slaughter

If they intend keeping this Lucy Beale murder plot going until next year on Eastenders, then the BBC is going to have to do something radical to keep up viewer interest.  At the very least, they could do it in the style of a giallo, maybe even getting Dario Argento in to direct some key episodes, where various characters find themselves stalked around Albert Square by a mysterious figure wearing clack leather gloves.  All accompanied by some wild Goblin tracks, obviously.  They should definitely throw in a few more murders.  Bizarre ones, with people being dragged to their deaths behind lorries, scalded to death in hot baths or by having their teeth smashed out on a mantelpiece.  The motive has to be unbelievably complex as well, rooted in the past and involving bricked up rooms and corpses in weird old houses (or maybe just Ian's cafe), with children's drawings and strange tunes as clues.  I know, I've seen Profondo Rosso too many times.  

Then again, perhaps they could go down the Agatha Christie route, with Dot Cotton doing a Miss Marple act and solving the crime through the medium of knitting.  It could all culminate with her gathering the suspects in the 'accusing room' of the Queen Vic, (a room hitherto completely unknown to landlord Mick), before revealing the murderer.  Who is bound to be the funeral director - he's been drumming up business since moving to the Square by knocking off a few locals.  Actually, an even better twist would be for Dot Cotton herself to be unmasked as the killer.  When I say 'unmasked', I mean literally - like in Scooby Doo.  Her rubber mask is pulled off to reveal the face of her son 'Nasty' Nick Cotton - he'd murdered the real Dot with the aid of his son Charlie after faking his own death: it was Dot's body in that coffin, not his.  Why did he murder Lucy?  Well, she obviously saw 'Dot' taking a piss standing up, or something, and deuced the truth, thereby signing her own death warrant.  Or, maybe Ian learns the identity of his daughter's murderer early on, kills them, disposes of their body, then commits several more murders himself, using the original killer's MO and DNA samples he took from the body, so as to fool the police.  Damn,  We're back in giallo territory - that's Tenebrae, isn't it?