Capital?

As the BBC prepares to expose either Vladimir Putin or Ed Miliband as the killer of Lucy Beale, we all know that it was really Oliver Kamm.

But consider how the most London of institutions portrays its own city.

Albert Square is overwhelmingly white. Everyone who lives there also works there, and everyone who works there also lives there. There is full employment, but no one has a washing machine. Newcomers always already know people, and are frequently related to them. Borderline incest is rife.

Normally, the participants in that last are not technically related, such as Jack, who married the sister of his daughter's mother. Or Charlie, who is currently getting a bit too close to the sister of his comatose wife. The two women in those two cases are the same two women in both cases.

Cindy is not biologically related to Ian, so her burgeoning association with Ian's half-niece's son, Liam, is, well, it is what it is, I suppose. However, the tweenie romance between Liam's sister, Tiffany, and Ian's son, Bobby, was of a different order.

And then there is little Lexie, who will be three this year. Her paternal grandfather and one of her maternal great-grandfathers are first cousins who share a surname and a postcode.

There is nothing like that in Coronation Street, or Emmerdale, or The Archers. But this is how the most London of institutions sees its own city. And this is clearly how the BBC wants everyone else to see London, too.