text: Santer officially left EastEnders in March 2010, and was replaced by Bryan Kirkwood. Kirkwood's first signing was the reintroduction of characters Alfie Moon (Shane Richie) and Kat Moon (Jessie Wallace), and his first new character was Vanessa Gold, played by Zöe Lucker. In April and May 2010, Kirkwood axed eight characters from the show, Barbara Windsor left her role of Peggy Mitchell, which left a hole in the show, which Kirkwood decided to fill by bringing back Kat and Alfie, which he said would "herald the new era of EastEnders." EastEnders started broadcasting in high definition on 25 December 2010. Old sets had to be rebuilt, so The Queen Victoria set was burnt down in a storyline (and in reality) to facilitate this.
  In November 2011, a storyline showed character Billy Mitchell, played by Perry Fenwick, selected to be a torch bearer for the 2012 Summer Olympics. In reality, Fenwick carried the torch through the setting of Albert Square, with live footage shown in the episode on 23 July 2012. This was the second live broadcast of EastEnders. In 2012, Kirkwood chose to leave his role as executive producer and was replaced by Lorraine Newman. The show lost many of its significant characters during this period. Newman stepped down as executive producer after 16 months in the job in 2013 after the soap was criticised for its boring storylines and its lowest-ever figures pointing at around 4.8 million. Dominic Treadwell-Collins was appointed as the new executive producer on 19 August 2013 and was credited on 9 December. He axed multiple characters from the show and introduced the extended Carter family. He also introduced a long-running storyline, "Who Killed Lucy Beale?", which peaked during the show's 30th anniversary in 2015 with a week of live episodes. Treadwell-Collins announced his departure from EastEnders on 18 February 2016.