TVEYE : SOAPS ON THE STEPPES

Tony Jordan, one of the chief scriptwriters on EastEnders, remembers what Kazakh television used to be like. "It was the Bolshoi Ballet between eight and nine, a documentary about potato farming at nine, and KGB News at ten."

All that changed, however, when Jordan and a team of other British soap experts flew out to Kazakhstan to help the local television industry develop its first-ever long-running serial - a project that has been captured on film for "East of EastEnders", this week's Omnibus.

Part of an Overseas Development Agency initiative, it was reportedly designed to educate the Kazaks about economic reform, but Jordan didn't let that hinder his creativity. "People were whispering that it was a propaganda exercise to extol the virtues of Western civilisation. But nobody ever said to me, `Can you mention the Bundesbank?'."

Whatever its original aim, the project appeared to work. Crossroads - the ironically titled soap that Jordan and the rest revved up - has reached Number 6 in the Kazakh TV ratings, and grabs a huge 26 per cent of the audience share. "From nothing to what they're doing now is wonderful," Jordan beams.

When he was first approached with the idea, however - the ODA phoned him up at his wedding reception - Jordan was not so sure. He was even forced to ask: "Does anyone know where Kazakhstan is?" When he found out where it was - the former Soviet republic is hard by the Chinese border - he was tickled by the prospect. "It was too ludicrous to resist," he chuckles. "How could you turn down the chance to go to Kazakhstan for free with the ridiculous proposition of making a Russian soap? You'd be sat in your bath-chair at the age of 73 saying, `I should have done it'."

A notable writer who has scripted many of EastEnders' finest hours (the "Sharongate" saga and Arthur's funeral, for instance), Jordan was well aware that the whole enterprise might be viewed as cultural imperialism. One local actor called the Brit-inspired script "a total, total profanity", and a Kazakh writer who was dropped from the Crossroads writing team growled that: "The British arrive and say, `We know everything in five minutes. Up yours!'".

"There's always going to be that sense," Jordan concedes. "How can you get away from it? But I don't give a toss whether it was morally right. We arrived to find writers struggling; now they're earning a living. That makes it worthwhile."

Initially, there were striking cultural differences. "A lot of the writers were novelists and wanted to create art," recalls Jemma Jupp, the producer of the Omnibus. "Following the EastEnders model was difficult for them. They were saying, `We live in a rubbish tip. Why do we want to see one on telly?' They wanted people riding on horseback."

That was just for starters. "One of the Kazakh writers' original ideas was to have a main character turning into a werewolf," Jordan reveals. "I had this image of Arthur Fowler going to the allotments on the night of a full moon, growing a snout, pawing the ground and barking at the moon. Now that would have been a story."

But after a while, most of the Kazaks began to understand the international language of storytelling Jordan was speaking. "People are people - as a writer, I know that," he asserts. "Love, sex and greed are stories in any language."

He taught them the golden rules of soap success, followed the world over from Brazil to Britain. "A soap needs secrets," he declares. "It needs things to happen that only the audience and some of the characters are privy to. Things like Michelle's child in EastEnders. They're time-bombs, providing huge moments for the future. As you go along, you lay down nuts like a squirrel. In two or three years you can go back to them."

Jordan trusts that the British team have left a lasting legacy that has nothing to do with the joys of capitalism. "I hope the Crossroads audiences identify with the characters - as we do with EastEnders," he observes. "I hope the population in Kazakhstan look at Crossroads and say, `Thank God I'm not the only one who has suffered marital rape and can't pay the bills.' If that's what we've achieved, that'll do for me."

Omnibus's `East of EastEnders' is on BBC1 tomorrow at 10.45pm