After the huge changes, what does the future hold for Hollyoaks? It could be brighter than ever
Change is never easy – I just need a small tweak to my daily routine to be thrown off course.
So, for fans of Hollyoaks, the last few months have been unsettling to say the least. Casts and episodes being cut are rarely positive signs for a show’s future and many could be forgiven to have worried about the soap’s longevity.
I can’t lie, I was a bit perturbed too. While right now, I am in a position of hope for what I now view as a fresh era for Hollyoaks, for a while, my heart was low.
This was mostly because I love the folk at Hollyoaks as much as I love the show itself, so to see the team being decimated in a sudden way was painful.
Such choppy waters – and choppy is my understatement of the century – are hard to navigate for anyone there, not to mention the viewers.
At the helm, and in the job in an official capacity for not all that long, is Hannah Cheers, and the task of implementing these decisions and keeping the show and its storylines adapted and running on air is a new one on any soap or TV producer.
Unchartered territory, something which Hollyoaks is no stranger to.
Audiences are changing and so, to survive, Channel 4 pushed the versatile soap in its crown to lead the charge and show the other soaps, who have since followed, that focusing on digital viewings is the future.
As hard as they were – and still are – to take, the drastic changes were a result of audience behaviour, as Hannah explained to me when she sat down with a chat with Metro about where Hollyoaks goes from here.
‘Being the first ones to make the move to streaming services, and in terms of Channel 4’s wider strategy, we’ve done a lot of talking and thinking about it. It follows audience research, but it is a complete no brainer in terms of it needing to slot into people’s lives,’ she explained.
‘Everything that we consume in our world is about how things can be more efficient, how we can make our lives better and easier, and obviously it makes sense that entertainment follows that pattern too.’
Indeed, with viewing figures and social media engagement actually increasing pretty impressively for the show, there is clearly a lot in that.
There’s no denying that, with all TV, live viewings are on a downward trajectory. Look at any overnights and compare them to 10 years ago and a pre-Netflix age, and the difference is staggering. On first glance, it paints a bleak picture.
But it doesn’t mean that nobody is watching anymore. It just means they’re watching differently. Due to the fact soaps cross generations, they haven’t suffered quite as much on TV as some other shows – Coronation Street is still one of TV’s best rated shows, for example.
However, ITV have also taken up the digital charge, Corrie and Emmerdale being the last of the core soaps to do so, as, without an online presence or streaming model, the next decade will yield a much less positive picture.
With a team Hannah is extremely proud of feeling as passionate about Hollyoaks as ever, she couldn’t be more pleased to see the move somewhat vindicated by the stats.
With a smile, she said: ‘I am incredibly proud of the entire production for getting not only through the milestone point of transitioning from five to three, but now being in a rhythm of producing this new format show that the audience is still responding to in a really positive and strong way – I feel that we achieved the time-jump quite seamlessly.
‘This has been the biggest creative challenge that Hollyoaks has ever faced in 30 years.
‘We went from having 16 stories playing at any one time, to now having about six or seven stories on the go. There’s quite a big engineering feat in turning that round, and we had to do it at the same time as carrying on and keeping moving. We had amazing expertise from our head of production and our whole production team in terms of physically getting to that point.
‘We have been very aligned and joined up with Channel 4 throughout this whole journey, and the love and support they have for the show is so important and has given us the freedom to reach the heights that we have with the show.’
For myself, it seems bonkers that the time-jump was only around two months ago. It feels like this IS Hollyoaks now and part of that is because the show has retained its familiarity.
Yes, there are differences in how things are put together, there will always be storylines that divide fans or miss the mark, and inevitably the pacing initially took a hit but at the core, this is still Hollyoaks.
The characters we know and love are still in the midst or high emotion, topical sagas or caught up in high-camp soaptastic situations with twists and turns.
‘The audience are just as invested, if not more invested in some stories that they’ve been watching all year,’ Hannah continued. ‘I’m taking that as proud proof that we’ve achieved this really well, and with merit.
‘I think the fact that our audience is still super engaged in Frankie’s plight, and that the Cleo and Abe story is catching fire, stories that started a year ago on the show, and we’ve taken them on that transition. And yes, the show is slightly shorter and on for fewer days a week, but this is familiar.
‘We have our signature style, and the figures are showing me that that’s still working. Viewers are very clear and aware of what Hollyoaks is, as brand and as a show, who our characters are, what they represent, the kind of stories we tell and the balance of stories.
‘The packaging may have changed, and we may be a bite sized piece rather than a grab size, but the guts of Hollyoaks is still there!’
The biggest thing to tackle with the show’s changes for Hannah was that afore-mentioned pacing – how do you lose so much time but retain the same heightened level of buzz and quickness, while also having breathing space for more digestible and slower episodes to build community and character relationships?
‘We need to ensure that there is a continuity of pace,’ Hannah told me when assessing her biggest priorities moving forwards. ‘Pace is the single most important thing at Hollyoaks. We have to keep the audience moving all the time with the waves of a story and introducing the next one, and making sure that those minutes absolutely count and that you can’t take your eyes off the screen.
‘But also creating the moments where you just want to play some amazing, important character texture, or have something breathe and have the weight of someone’s predicament sit with them and make the audience go, “that’s me”.’
That’s not an easy balance with so little time to play with, something that Hannah is aware of.
‘If you have 18 and a half minutes of someone just having two-handers, then you can have a pace problem because even though they’re really compelling moments and scenes, you still need to be moving everything else. I was finessing all the time.
‘Every time I go to a viewing, I’ve got thoughts about how we can make things even better. Boldly, I don’t want to ever shy away from stopping sometimes and allowing the characters to breathe and offer the audience that character exploration, because that is the blueprint of a successful soap, having that mixed in with the fast-paced plot stuff when you need it, and the shock reveals.
‘I’m confident that we can still upset the rhythm when we want to, and slow things down when we need to. And then we can suddenly do something that the audience aren’t expecting and the freedom to do that which we have at Hollyoaks has grown, if anything.’ And very much the writers are also feeling like that. If anything, it offers more opportunity.”
Like myself, Hannah is a self-confessed soap obsessive since childhood and jokes (half jokes?) that she knows Coronation Street better than she knows her husband.
So for her, being at the helm of a soap, largely seen as the underdog and so often hit with doom-mongering, is something she doesn’t take for granted.
And there is already real excitement in the air for the 30th!
‘I would say that even for the last six months every single conversation I’ve ever had with a writer or anybody is about the 30th!’ she grinned. ‘We’ve got about ten feature-length films for the 30th, so many ideas! I keep saying, “Guys, we need to pace ourselves, there’s only so much airtime!”
‘Obviously, the single biggest thing is that the stories are all lined up and that the stories are there to give us the right emotional peaks and then we can build out everything else around it. The stories have been circulating for a while and some things we’re already paving the way to now, and in the new year we will be firming up those plans, which is really exciting.
‘After this year, and feeling the way everyone does about the show, everyone is just feeling so energized and the 30th anniversary will be such a marker of how this show, this perennial underdog, has made it to its 30th birthday!’
So what does the future hold? Speaking to Hannah, who oozes enthusiasm, loyalty and love for the show, it’s hard not to come away feeling invigorated.
‘I always want people to have a fond smile when they talk about Hollyoaks,because I think as a fan of the show you have a very unique relationship with it. I want Hollyoaks to always be something that people are fond of, because they know that it will constantly deliver surprises, and you never quite know what you’re going to get.
‘There’s no sense of predictability with Hollyoaks and that’s my favourite thing about it. That’s why I think the future is so exciting because I think we are very good at evolving and regenerating.
‘Everyone that works on it, the amazing team we have in Liverpool, are just constantly seeking the high of what the next thing is.
‘I want the audience to continue to be proud of it and feel like it entertains them and that it continues to entertain future generations as well, and that they will always come to Hollyoaks for a bit of an adrenaline high, or a cry, but something that sucks you in and chucks you out and makes you feel something brilliant.’
