Set in the fictional town of Los Barcos on the Costa Eldorado in Spain and following the lives of British and European expatriates, the BBC hoped it would be as successful as EastEnders and replicate some of the sunshine and glamour of imported Australian soaps such as Home and Away and Neighbours.

[16] The series was set to debut in September 1992, but the premiere date was brought forward to July of that year,[17] which meant the turnaround of production had to be quickened.

Possibly in a bid to court media attention, Eldorado opened with the controversial story of a middle-aged man, Bunny (played by Roger Walker), returning from the UK with a 17-year-old bride, Fizz (Kathy Pitkin); many viewers felt this storyline was implausible and sordid.

On top of this, ITV decided to air a special one-hour edition of Coronation Street on the show's debut evening, reputedly an attempt by network executives to sabotage the programme.

Hollingworth brought about many changes to Eldorado by hiring new scriptwriters, creating extra rehearsal time and removing many of the inexperienced actors who had attracted criticism.

[19] Changes made by Hollingworth to rectify the soap's early problems led to a ratings increase, but it was claimed that this was not enough to justify its continued production, and incoming controller of BBC1, Alan Yentob, cancelled the programme, which had been commissioned by his predecessor Jonathan Powell.

[22] The series ended with one of its central characters, Marcus Tandy (Jesse Birdsall), escaping an attempt on his life with his car being blown up, and sailing off into the distance on a boat with his girlfriend Pilar Moreno (Sandra Sandri).

Some viewers noticed that the car that was blown up was not, in fact, the Renault Alpine A610 driven by Marcus, but a thinly disguised much older model, the Triumph TR7.

May reworked a song called "When You Go Away" which he had written for his ill-fated musical Mefisto, based on Goethe's Faust, adding Spanish guitars to make it more relevant to the Eldorado project.