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- guardian.co.uk, Monday January 29 2001 12.59 GMT
The realistic portrayal of violence in TV drama increased significantly in 1999, according to Broadcasting Standards Commission research.
1999 was the year in which EastEnders fell foul of the BSC for the graphic depiction of Steve Owen's murder of scheming Saskia.
In total, 692 scenes of fictional violence were recorded in 1999 and 68% were regarded as realistic.
This compares with 62% the previous year, according to the BSC.
The number of violent scenes also increased markedly in 1999, up to 1,356 from 1,230 the previous year, according to the BSC.
Much of this increase was put down to coverage of the Kosovo conflict.
News and current affairs accounted for 28% of all depictions of violence on UK terrestrial channels in 1999.
The amount of swearing and bad language on terrestrial TV rose significantly in the 1990s, according to the BSC research.
In 1999, the BSC recorded 2,887 incidents of offensive language, the highest since the regulator began its tracking survey in 1993.
In 1993 there were just over 2,000 incidents of bad language.
Sex was another televised activity on the increase.
The number of scenes in which sexual acts were portrayed rose from 176 in 1998 to 201 in 1999.
But the actual number of programmes containing "significant" incidents of sex, violence or bad language remained relatively small, according to the BSC.
Only 5% of shows were felt to contain a significant amount of violence and 4% had notable levels of strong language.
Only 2.5% featured scenes of explicit sex.
