Hollyoaks

Hollyoaks is a British soap opera that was originally created by king of melodrama Phil Redmond in 1995.  Mr Park was also the brains behind Brookside, Grange Hill and Waterloo Road. Set around a fictional village called Hollyoaks outside of Chester in the north of England, the program focussed on the lives of teenagers and young people in their early twenties.

I was rather late to come under this spell of this rather hit & miss show, late 2009 in fact.  In my opinion, I find that this TV show would be more interesting if there were just 2 episodes a week and not 5.  Hollyoaks has had 3 Executive Producers within the last 3 years as its ratings have plummeted.

Sometimes a single episode is written by 5 people which may explain why characters, characterisation and even storylines tend to be forgotten.  Any traumatic event tends to forgotten within a few weeks.  In real life if you found out that your grandfather had been the serial killer, who has been tormenting your small village for a year and killed your mum, you wouldn't be interested in trying to fix the love lives of your friend and a girl who has been bitchy towards you the following week.

In terms of acting, the soap tends to be the weakest out of the 4 British soap opera's (Emmerdale, EastEnders, Coronation Street & Hollyoaks), although there are some exceptions.  There are far too many characters, so much as that even the writers forget about some of them from time to time.  Many of the teenagers are only on screens as part of the storylines for the McQueens.  This probably explains why the characterisation suffers as some of the characters have personality transplants every year.

Having said all that Hollyoaks does have its good points.  For 30% of the time I think that some of the emotions generated from some storylines can outstrip any of the other soap opera's.  One big bonus is that the TV magazines tend to ignore upcoming storylines in Hollyoaks, meaning that when something really big happens, it is genuinely shocking.

The script tends to be more daring than any other British soap because the writers are unafraid to shoot in different styles more akin to Hollywood.  For example: last Christmas when Doug was close to suicide after the murder of his girlfriend earlier in year, there was one episode that paid homage to It's A Wonderful Life, whereby he made the choice to forsake the life of his girlfriend after he was shown what misery the life of his friends would have been if he had ran off with her instead before she was murdered beforehand.  Unfortunately this was quickly forgotten the following week, but it does show however that unlike most British drama and films, the writers are not afraid to show more breadth and scope in their storytelling.

I find most of the soaps frustratingly middling in genre as they are unsure whether they are shooting a 'kitchen sink' drama or a melodrama.  Even classic literature such as Macbeth uses a fantasy element and yet it's studied in schools.  There is nothing wrong at all with fantasy drama.  If I wanted to watch a 'realistic' drama based on an ordinary street, I'd look at my window as I live on a street.  There is nothing wrong with this type of drama, but the fact is Coronation Street and Emmerdale are more like a melodrama now, although not as extreme as EastEnders.

I mean many people love Star Wars and you never hear complaints of its Science Fiction element.