John Yorke

In June 2017, it was announced that EastEnders executive producer Sean O'Connor had stepped down and would be temporarily replaced by Yorke as executive consultant. Yorke announced that he would be staying with the show for a year, longer than his original three months he was contracted to.

He also wrote two episodes of Casualty between 2016 and 2017.

He was a regular writer on Red Rock, writing six episodes between 2015 and 2016.

In March 2012, Yorke became acting editor of radio soap The Archers while Vanessa Whitburn took long service leave.

He left the BBC again later in 2012. In 2013, he was an executive producer of Truckers and Skins, and the following year, The Missing.

In 2010, Yorke's job title was changed to that of Controller Continuing Drama Production Studios. He was the executive producer of the Internet spin-off EastEnders: E20 and BBC daytime drama, Land Girls.

In 2009. he was made controller of the newly formed BBC Drama Production – a merger of Continuing Series and Series and Serials. While at the BBC, Yorke has been Commissioning Editor/Executive Producer for Life on Mars, Robin Hood, Bodies, The Street, A Class Apart, Waterloo Road and HolbyBlue, as well as looking after various series of Spooks, Hustle and New Tricks.

He axed the majority of the Di Marco family, and helped introduce popular characters such as the Slater family. As what Mal Young described as "two of EastEnders most successful years", Yorke was responsible for big ratings winners such as "Who Shot Phil?", Ethel Skinner's death, Jim Branning and Dot Cotton's marriage, abusive Trevor Morgan, and Kat Slater's revelation to her daughter Zoe that she was her mother. Yorke was also responsible for Kim Medcalf being cast in the role of Sam Mitchell in January 2002, after Danniella Westbrook's drug addiction left her unsuitable for the role.

In May 2002, he left the soap for a senior position under Mal Young in the BBC's in-house Drama Series team, but soon after he left to work for Channel 4 as the Head of Drama in 2003. At Channel 4, he commissioned series such as Shameless, Sex Traffic and the critically acclaimed Omagh. In 2005, it was announced he would return to the BBC, taking over Mal Young's position, as Controller of BBC Drama Series, and, in addition, Co-Head of Independent Drama Commissioning (i.e. programmes made for the BBC by independent production companies, rather than in-house).

In 1994, he moved to television, working as a script editor on EastEnders before becoming the storyline consultant on Casualty. In 1999, after a brief period as producer on Sunburn, he took on the executive producer role on EastEnders. During his time there, he was given the task of introducing the soap's fourth weekly episode.

Yorke attended Newcastle University. He joined the BBC in 1986, working initially in radio as a studio manager and then as a producer on BBC Radio 5.

John Roland Clifford Yorke (born 9 July 1962) is a British television producer and script editor, who was the executive consultant of BBC soap opera EastEnders from November 2017 to February 2019. Previously, he was the executive producer of EastEnders from 2000 to 2002 and 2004 to 2005.