THIS year’s EastEnders Christmas episodes will set new standards in harrowing festive grimness, the BBC has promised.

Special episodes of the long-running clinical depression drama will feature marital discord, family breakdowns, infidelity, betrayal and the return of classic 90s failure Nigel Bates, now undead.

A BBC spokesman said: “We’ve pulled out all the stops this year. There’s not a character who won’t see their world destroyed and collapse weeping while fairy lights twinkle in the background.

“It’s a human chain of abject misery, from Cindy to Ian, from Ian to Pete, from Pete to Alfie and from Alfie to Sonia. Like dominos they’ll fall into the black hole of darkness that’s always yawned beneath the square, devouring human souls.

“There will be kidnappings, murders, a public flaying, the use of a family as human skittles, cannibalism and the ultimate horror of a market stall left unsupervised.

“It ends with the reformation by Sharon and Ian of The Banned, their 80s spin-off pop group, with members forced at gunpoint to play a slowed-down dirge rendition of their hit Something Out of Nothing with a family member killed for every bum note.

“How lovely your own Christmas will seem in comparison. Positively joyous.”