When Hollyoaks started, it was being touted as a soap aimed at teens. I haven't watched Hollyoaks for many years, but would it be fair to say, Hollyoaks is now, what Brookside was?
Absolutely not. Brookside had a much more social focus. And wasn't obsessed with dreadful actors who would be better served as models playing vacuous characters
Hollyoaks was based around the Uni when it was first on, I even remember a lot of it being shot in Chester on location. I think a lot of that stopped when Brookside was canned and Hollyoaks took over the parade.
I haven't seen it in years, not since Hannah had her eating disorder, but I hear the Uni etc has long gone now?
When Hollyoaks started, it was being touted as a soap aimed at teens. I haven't watched Hollyoaks for many years, but would it be fair to say, Hollyoaks is now, what Brookside was?
Absolutely not. Brookside had a much more social focus. And wasn't obsessed with dreadful actors who would be better served as models playing vacuous characters
Hollyoaks was based around the Uni when it was first on, I even remember a lot of it being shot in Chester on location. I think a lot of that stopped when Brookside was canned and Hollyoaks took over the parade.
I haven't seen it in years, not since Hannah had her eating disorder, but I hear the Uni etc has long gone now?
Don't remember it having a uni when I watched it. There was a lot of FE students but don't recall seeing much of them at college.
It certainly never had the same vein of completely barmy sensationalism that from what I've heard characterised Brookside, just slightly more willing to go over the top with storylines and get a bit darker.
Brookside seemed to be a playground for bonkers soap storylines whereas Hollyoaks is a playground for tenable but still daft plots.
A pandemic would never fly in HO if it weren't a real life parallel for example, and HO prefers a yearly serial killer to the yearly seige/bomb plot.
But fundamentally Hollyoaks is driven by sex which I don't get the impression Brookside was.
Incest with the Simpson family, chlyamidia with the Simpson mother, sexy times with Bev and Ron, sexy time with Max Farnham and his latest, sexy time with susannah Farnham and mr shadwick when the Millenium Club bomb went off, sexy time with Lindsay corkhill and her girlfriend, sexy time with Jackie corkhill and her daughters girlfriend.... there was a LOT of sexy time in Brookside.
I wonder if Brookside should have tried going back to basics rather than going more sensational, but then I imagine it would have been hard to get viewers back by that point anyway. When they decided to celebrate the 20th birthday with yet another siege and a helicopter crash...
I find it interesting the way this episode guide classifies the show, separating it into 70 "seasons", and giving each episode a title. I presume this is how the show was treated internally, especially seeing as most changes made to the show (title sequences, theme music, going widescreen, the introduction of the film look etc.) do co-incide with the start of a new "season", though I don't recall the episode titles ever appearing on screen, or in listings.
Whoever made it even notes every time the magic rabbits appear or their music was heard!
One thing I remember about Brookside is from around 1995 onwards the omnibus editions went out in 14:9, but comparing clips I've seen online since it looks like they just cropped the 4:3 image to 14:9 (and on most examples I've seen shifted the picture upwards, so everything's cropped off the bottom), unlike Hollyoaks which actually was made in 16:9 from day one. Seems a bit puzzling why they did that seeing as it wasn't actually made in widescreen. Brookside doesn't seem to actually have been made in widescreen until March 1999 (and for the first few months of that they used the previous titles cropped down until they introduced the new ones).
When Hollyoaks started, it was being touted as a soap aimed at teens. I haven't watched Hollyoaks for many years, but would it be fair to say, Hollyoaks is now, what Brookside was?
Absolutely not. Brookside had a much more social focus. And wasn't obsessed with dreadful actors who would be better served as models playing vacuous characters
Hollyoaks was based around the Uni when it was first on, I even remember a lot of it being shot in Chester on location. I think a lot of that stopped when Brookside was canned and Hollyoaks took over the parade.
I haven't seen it in years, not since Hannah had her eating disorder, but I hear the Uni etc has long gone now?
It's very early days (which Cobbles is clearly basing all his opinons on) were more around the college and non-student young adults - they'd certainly introduced the student element by 2000/2001 and refreshed them quite successfully every 2-3 years. The final real batch of freshers was around 2011/2012, and were a pretty good selection of characters but it was a the time the awful Sixth Formers were dominating the show and they got caught in the collateral damage and they haven't really had a batch of Freshers since. However as they have a half decent group of Sixth Formers at the moment perhaps it is something that might come back in next year.
Anyhow, this won't change Cobbles opinion (indeed it probably backs this up) but this "Previously on Hollyoaks" from their 20th anniversary five years ago sums it all up.
The show has changed quite significantly though in the last 5 years though with the focus on a number of long standing 30-something characters since the return of Luke and Mandy, but as I said it has probably it's strongest young cast in quite some time and does quite alot at the school - indeed I think 5 of the older characters are all teachers.
One thing I remember about Brookside is from around 1995 onwards the omnibus editions went out in 14:9, but comparing clips I've seen online since it looks like they just cropped the 4:3 image to 14:9 (and on most examples I've seen shifted the picture upwards, so everything's cropped off the bottom), unlike Hollyoaks which actually was made in 16:9 from day one. Seems a bit puzzling why they did that seeing as it wasn't actually made in widescreen. Brookside doesn't seem to actually have been made in widescreen until March 1999 (and for the first few months of that they used the previous titles cropped down until they introduced the new ones).
Here’s an example of the omnibus cropping if anyone doesn’t want to go about and search for the clips:
It's really surprised me that during this pandemic, more channels haven't reached into their back catalogue and re-aired some lesser seen old shows as a treat. Now's the perfect time to test and see if the audience is there for such material and if not on main TV why can't the likes of streaming services use the archive to their advantage?
On the subject of Brookside, it always seem to have been treated poorly compared to other soaps. I know people have said about the sensationalist storylines, but the way it was shot and the acting always seemed much more natural and realistic compared to a lot of poor acting seen on other soaps. I started watching in the late 90's so came in at tail end really, but did watch quite of the repeats when Living and Sky One were showing them. I find it surprising that the only episodes available to buy are on the 30th anniversary DVD and the made-for-DVD episode with Tinhead and Steve going after one of the siege characters.
Thanks to a couple of torrent websites I've managed to acquire every single episode of Brookie, bar one and the spin-offs too and have been slowly dipping in and out of them inbetween other boxsets/Netflix binging. Currently on the beginning of 1988 (year I was born) just after Damon was killed off, and really enjoying it so far particularly a lot of the humour it had in the early days.
Regarding Brookside's demise, I think it was caused by various elements
Plots - Increasingly frequent explosions and sieges, far too many gangster storylines, and stories involving drugs which turned viewers off, also other plots were dragged out, and also due to the frequent disasters many other characters ended up becoming depressive. I recall one new family who started, and before long both the mum and dad had died, so we went from a new light and shade family to 3 orphaned children in permanent misery
Other soaps - Increase of episodes of other soaps meant that Brookside found it had to find a slot that wasn't up against another soap, also viewers who watched multiple soaps found more and more of their time taken up, so had to make a decision to drop one of the soaps from their viewing
Channel 4 - Brookside was becoming less and less important to them, Big Brother had started, Hollyoaks was fresher and doing well at teatime, probably with better demographics, this lead to episodes moving around the schedule, different days and times, for seemingly no reason but Channel 4 having something better to show that week.
The actual demise was pretty poorly handled for such a long running show, initially Channel 4 binned off the weekday episodes and ran it just as the Saturday omnibus, but then that started moving into worse and worse slots, from teatime to mid afternoon. Then of course they moved this 'omnibus' to late night. 10pm wasn't that bad, but it got worse and worse and many episodes didn't finish until way past Midnight. Ridiculous for what was brand new drama that Channel 4 were obviously still paying for.
Initially the 90 min episodes were still written as 3x30 mins but eventually became 90 minute stories which meant characters and stories were dropped for weeks. Of course when it moved to late night, Phil Redmond brought in one dimensional gangster 'Jack Michaelson' who told everyone frequently to F off and there were scenes of violence not just from the outset but all across the episodes and then it died off finally at going up to 1 in the morning.
The funny thing was when they binned Brookside off to 10/11pm/12am on Tuesday nights it got better again, but by that time it had already been axed and they were just seeing the show out. I recall there was one episode they showed after 12:00am on a Tuesday night, which really showed that Channel 4 didn’t care by this point. I think the last episode got a 10:30pm showing.
Was never a Brookie fan, but thought the ending was quite bold- no attempts to keep it going. Didn’t like the brief stab of the Grange Hill theme at the very, very end though: hugely self-indulgent.
Was never a Brookie fan, but thought the ending was quite bold- no attempts to keep it going. Didn’t like the brief stab of the Grange Hill theme at the very, very end though: hugely self-indulgent.
Had no idea until now. Jarrs very badly, as if Phil Redmond was doing everything he could to tell Channel 4 to naff off.
