Sylph

Probably not.

BTW, I keep forgetting, who's the head writer?

Well, it got fantastic ratings.

Hollyoaks has been very consistent over the past two and a half years, and the show has always been youth-centered though, that was its original premise - a soap about youth and adolescence problems. Hollyoaks has always been the lighter, more warmer soap, which is appreciated.

No one is criticising you and I have no problem with it being youth-centred. But, I do like my soaps set in a town with feuding, filthy rich families. And that's something a soap with such a nice title isn't offering me.

I do enjoy Corrie and EastEnders, but over the past two years, I've gone through the motions with those soaps. Corrie has been boring as hell for a good year now to me, and EastEnders is severely slipping in quality. I've never found Emmerdale watchable, but Hollyoaks has treated me very well in terms of building story and creating a great resolution over the past two and a half years, and as a soap fan, that's all I can ask for.

Yeah, they are a total dreck, those two... British soaps are, as it seems, in a crisis once again. They all need a new EP.

I think Bevan is a fairly heavy hitter these days with Channel 7 and he went back to Home and Away because he wanted to write the bulk of the 20th anniversary stuff. It's clearly a show he's got a tremendous soft spot before despite going up in the world. I've not seen Packed to the Rafters but as far as I'm aware it veers more towards drama like his old show Always Greener. I hear dramedy and I think Ally McBeal.

But as it turns out, when these talented, one-of-a-kind soap opera writers leave the soaps, they rarely achieve anything worthwhile. I really haven't watched those shows, but from reading the synopses, they seem nothing special. And kind of disappointing. It's just a traditional drama with little innovation.

As for dramedy, I actually detest that word. There's tragedy, drama and comedy. And drama by definition inludes tragic and comedic elements. So the term ends up redundant.

I'd love to know more about Darran Little's role but that's a discussion for another thread.

Boy, did that new move plummet or what...

To stay on topic I chose to watch the two episodes surrounding Niall blowing up the church. God knows I can never get on board with Hollyoaks ordinarily. There are flaws about it that I can't get past including some of the acting and the fact that character groups can go for weeks on end without being shown. I also found out a while ago that the storyliners/script writers are instructed to make sure they do not begin or end a scene with any of the older characters i.e parents. The emphasis is supposed to remain solely on the young characters and this undermines Bryan Kirkwood's wishes to make it a more inter-generational show.

HOWEVER.

As far as soapy goodness, these episodes were well done. John Paul, Tina and Mercedes couldn't act but the others were good enough to elevate it. I've got to give credit to Hollyoaks for one thing. They really know how to build up a long term storyline and give it a payoff.

I totally share this view. I'm so not a die-hard fan like Y&RWorldTurner, but I really appreciate how he (Bryan) turned it from an idiotic soap into something truly watchable and worth someone's time.

Imagine he and Bevan Lee (Home and Away) being allowed to write a soap in the U.S.

It would be splendid, but it would never work. Especially since Darran Little's arrival totally flopped.

Bevan is now writing for Packed to the Rafters, a dramedy. Why on Earth did he decide to go back to Home & Away for only six months is beyond me...

Smells like teen spirit

Hollyoaks was dismissed as a bit of a joke 18 months ago, but now with Bryan Kirkwood at the helm the show looks set to clean up at Saturday's British Soap Awards

Stephen Armstrong



Soap operas and gameshows are broadcasting's only true inventions. You can usually gauge the creative health of the medium by the ideas in each genre. Over in the US, the rise in drama has been driven by long-form quasi-soaps like Desperate Housewives. In the UK, that same level of plot complexity, hyper-real scripts and slightly camp dramedy is suddenly at the heart of Hollyoaks - the idiotic teen soap that has just undergone a curious rebirth.

Over the past 18 months, Hollyoaks has scored its best ever ratings, with an average of 4 million per episode and a peak of 4.5 million - inching closer to Holby City but still a little short of mainstream shows like EastEnders (7-8 million) and Coronation Street (9 million). Suddenly, the show that was a bit of joke is being taken seriously by the industry and critics alike - Hollyoaks was the only soap to be nominated in every single one of the 15 categories at the British Soap Awards.

"It's transformed itself, after years of being rubbish, into something lovely and delicate and clever and fun," says Russell T Davies, executive producer of Doctor Who.

"They've got better storylines and a broader range of characters," adds Gareth McLean, Guardian writer and Radio Times soap columnist. "The stories all used to be about chlamydia or one identikit blonde stealing another identikit blonde's boyfriend - and you just didn't care. Now you've got families like the Valentines - the soap's first black family - and the McQueens - neighbours from hell with a touching story about a young guy coming out. It's finally reflecting today's Britain."

Killing spree

Much of the credit for this lies with the show's producer Bryan Kirkwood (pictured, right). Kirkwood, 31, joined the show in January 2006 straight from the Coronation Street writers' room where he'd worked on Richard Hillman's killing spree and Peter and Shelly's bigamous marriage. When he arrived, it's fair to say the Hollyoaks awards cupboard was a fairly dusty place - one win in 2005, two in 2006.

He set about changing the show from the ground up, losing half the writers' room and some 15 cast members. "Hollyoaks used to have a reputation for blonde blandness," he says. "I don't have a problem with really good-looking actors, but I do want them to be able to act. We replaced the departing writers with some strong talent from the Liverpool theatre scene because a soap is only as strong as its storylines. I want to make Hollyoaks credible and cool like The OC and Dawson's Creek. That's where I see its future."

For him, the sheet of nominations are actually overdue. "It feels like I've been knocking on this locked door for the past 18 months, and everyone has only realised how good we've become in the last two weeks," he says with a wry grin.

Kirkwood's route to Hollyoaks was unusual. Born in Scotland, he moved down to Brighton when he was eight shortly after his mother died: "It was the defining moment of my life really. My little brother Graeme was five at the time, and it was an awful thing to happen but we have decided to take whatever positives out of it that we can and be as successful as possible."

He left college after his A-levels and worked in PR for six years before deciding he hated his job and needed to do something else. He quit and went to Australia to plan his next step, then came back to the UK and sent a begging letter asking for work experience in Coronation Street's archive. "I just loved the programme," he recalls. "I remember watching it, sitting on my granny's lap. The theme tune to the show brings it all back. She loved Coronation Street and Crossroads. I remember my grandad ripping the mickey out of her constantly about that 'dull rubbish' she was glued to."

He worked his way up through the ranks, constantly banging on the writers' room door with ideas until he was storylining the show. When Phil Redmond sold Mersey TV, it became Lime Picture and Corrie's Carolyn Reynolds and Tony Wood moved over to run the company - taking Kirkwood with them.

"I'd known Bryan a number of years both when I was at Network Centre and when I was on Corrie," says Wood. "He just never stops working. I promoted him twice - both times beyond what others thought were his abilities and he stepped up to the plate every time. He's got a very strong eye for story, but he knows that character is important as well - otherwise you're just a runaway train screaming from big bang to big bang."

Kirkwood is at the helm in some fairly stormy seas. Soap operas are having to struggle twice as hard as other dramas to keep their audience's attention. "The genre is vulnerable in the new climate," Wood acknowledges. Younger viewers are already illegally downloading episodes, despite careful cross-scheduling on supporting channels like ITV2 and E4.

Last week Emmerdale tried to recruit the online community by showing possible solutions to its Tom King murder mystery on YouTube. Ten different murder scenes were shown, with users invited to say which they thought the most likely - with the actual solution revealed on Thursday night. Series producer Kath Beedles says the results were promising. "We got an average of 8.6 million, with a peak of 9.1 million and a 47%," she says. "EastEnders averaged four million with a 20% share. We had three confessions on ITV.com, and they had 30,000 hits in five hours, while the YouTube films had something like 20,000 viewings. On our Who Killed Tom King website, we had around 1.5 million people using it in some way. It's certainly going to be part of our strategy in the future."

Meanwhile, Coronation Street is continuing the policy of celebrity casting established by Tony Wood when he put Sir Ian McKellen into the show - although he insists it started by accident when he signed up Status Quo to stop them ringing and begging. Next month comedian Sean Hughes is in the soap playing Eileen Grimshaw's love interest, taking up the comedy slack left by Peter Kay and Roy Hudd.

"I certainly see a role for online," Kirkwood agrees. "We've got a very strong proposition and it helps us get constant viewer feedback on storylines and characters. At the end of the day, though, a great soap is about writing really good characters and good stories. You have to get that right before you can do anything else."

Kirkwood's classics

Coronation Street "I'm paraphrasing Paul Abbott here but he remembers being really annoyed when he got a Jack-and-Vera storyline, then realising that taught him more about story than any blockbuster yarn."

The Muppet Show "I'm still amazed at the strength of characterisation, that you could focus kids' minds so that they absolutely believed these puppets were real people."

Dynasty "For the sheer scale of the story and its unashamed soapiness."

Moonlighting "The greatest TV romance. It should never have been consummated. It's a sign that you shouldn't always give in to the audience."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/may/21/mondaymediasection4

So in the end... And this is what I hate about British and Australian soap operas... Who the hell is creating the storylines? In this case, I'm guessing Bryan Kirkwood, of course? This is a mess, but strangely it works.

^LOL! You know, I've always thought Emmerdale might be the one UK soap that could catch on in America. Mainly because of its sometimes deeply sensationalistic/ridiculous storytelling.

Sure, I agree. That's why I love it. Although... I'm not actually watching it at the moment, no story really caught my attention. That woman who runs is has to go.

Or... And here's a shocker for you: he might try to run Emmerdale!

That's so sad!

I thought he had a totally defined new project!

Maybe he can replace Kim Crowther! (Yeah... I know - total fantasy.)

Corrie scriptwriter David Bowker

Last night's episode was the first (as far as I can recall) to be written by David Bowker, and it was a pretty good one, too.

So who is David Bowker? Well, he's had several novels published, including From Stockport With Love, which may be turned into a film as soon as they find a suitable lead actor for it. He's also worked as a journalist and has scripted an episode of Casualty. He was voted 'Manchester Writer of the Year' (not sure which year) by City Life magazine. I'm looking forward to future Corrie scripts by him, and have put his novel Rawhead in Love into my Amazon basket because it looks interesting, to say the least!

Digital Spy has a great interview with Kim Crowther in which she drops all sorts of brilliant-sounding snippets, such as...

• The repercussions of the Liam murder storyline are set to go on for "much longer than you'd expect."
• There are lots of plans for Carla when Alison King returns from her maternity leave. It's possible that her brother (who is in prison now) may turn up at some point though nothing has been firmly decided about that.
• A big story is coming up for Eileen, and we're going to be meeting her dad. This will connect her in some way with Rita and Julie (I'm guessing a romance with Rita).
• Big things are planned for Becky, who is going to be "massive" next year.
• Kim doesn't think there are any particular holes that need filling cast-wise, but if she had a wish-list she'd love to see Hilda Ogden, Karen McDonald, Shelley Unwin and Tracy Barlow all back in the Street. There are no plans currently to bring back Bradley Walsh.

A little bit more from Kim...

Where's he going?

I *LOVE* Pausini! I just can't listen to Celine though I admit I find her goofiness oddly endearing... (and I do own a few dance remix singles that remind me of clubbing in Montreal... *shh*)

Pausini is awesome, I like her pop.

And I wanted to listen to this album of Celine's because it features some French production and arrangements. Just to see how it sounds like.

EastEnders actress is dying of breast cancer


Jenny Booth

Wendy Richard, who gained fame in long-running television shows Are You Being Served? and EastEnders, revealed today that she was dying of cancer.

The 65-year-old actress said that she planned to marry her long-term partner within the week before starting her latest round of treatment.

The star has twice been diagnosed with breast cancer. In a newspaper interview, she said that she was diagnosed in January with a recurrence of an aggressive form of the disease that has attacked her kidney and spread to her bones.

Since then she had written her will and planned her funeral, she said.

“I went for my usual annual check-up and they found that some cancer cells had returned in my left armpit,” Ms Richard said.

“The drugs I was given to help had an adverse effect. If anything, they did more damage than good so my health has really deteriorated. Now I have a cancerous growth on my right kidney and the cancer has spread to my bones.

“Twice I’ve had breast cancer but this is different. It’s more aggressive this time, unfortunately, and has spread to the top of my spine and left ribs.”

She added: “My oncologist said I’ve got several useful years ahead of me but since then it’s got worse.”

Ms Richard said that she will marry her partner, John Burns, before starting chemotherapy treatment on October 13.

She rose to fame playing Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served? during the 1970s, and reinforced her stardom with the role of Pauline Fowler in the BBC1 soap opera EastEnders.

She was awarded the MBE for services to television in 2000.


http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/celebrity/article4885945.ece

Here's the early bible.

I've never considered "The Bill" a soap. It's more of a procedural drama.

Sure, I agree. But I've seen all too many times it being called a soap opera, from RTS to the Guild and so on.

More correctly, it's a serial, but this new producer that came now has re-introduced self-contained episodes so even that is a shaky classification.

Hollyoaks is the only real serial in that group of nominations. You have to wonder what criteria Great Britian's Guild uses to determine what's a "soap."

They're all soaps.

Writers’ Guild Awards 2008

Best Soap

• Mark Cairns, Andrew Holden, Martha Hillier, Sam Wheats, Graham Mitchell, Jake Riddlell, Chris Murray, Tony McHale, Matthew Evans, Martin Jameson, Dana Fainaru, Len Collin, Joe Ainsworth, Peter Lloyd, Ian Kershaw, Veronica Henry, Gert Thomas, Jeff Dodds, Dan Sefton, Sebastian Baczkiewicz, Daisy Coulam, Abi Bown - Holby City, Season 10
• Angela Corner Anna Clements Barry Woodward Carol Ann Docherty Chris Gill Daran Little David Mcdermott Helen Blakeman Jane Marlow Jane Pearson Jesse O'Mahoney Jessica Lea Johanne Mcandrew Elliot Hope Kim Millar Lyn Papadopoulos Mariam Vossough Mark Bickerton Matthew Westwood Maurice Bessman Nick Saltrese Nick West Paul Coates Perrie Balthazar Richard Burke Roger Williams Steven Fay Tara Byrne Tony Green Tracy Brabin - Hollyoaks
• Geoff McQueen (series deviser), Richard Ommanney, Neil Clarke, Steve Griffiths, Emma Goodwin, Julian Perkins, Steve Attridge, Clive Dawson, Peter G. Morgan, Andrew Taft, Chris Murray, Tom Higgins, Julia Wall, Maxwell Young, Jane Marlow, Sally Tatchell, Si Spencer, Matthew Bardsley, Jonathan Rich, Matthew Leys, James Hall, Chris Murray, Stuart Morris, Nicholas McInerny, Chris Ould, Alan Pollock, Simon Moss, Nicholas Martin, Scott Cherry, Doug Milburn, Steve Trafford, Stephanie Lloyd Jones, Steve Baillie, Frank Rickarby, Andrew Alty, Will Shindler, Chris Dunn, Sarah-Louise Hawkins, Len Collin, Gregory Evans, Tom Needham, Patrick Homes - The Bill, Season 23

But I will admit to you that the show really blossomed and geled when Pamela Long Hammer started writing and Gail Kobe took over as producer.

Where is this woman now? She is in her fifties and nowhere to be found. Not even doing, I don't know, primetime or theatre or something... Y&RWorlTurner told me that her stints on Santa Barbara and OLTL weren't well regarded, but that the fault really isn't hers. 

It is difficult to assess her, she only had one successful stint (GL), but I think she is miles better than some hacks still around (Passanante, for example).

It's kinda funny people are already calling this a comeback when it doesn't seem to be any change or progression from her last album...

Actually... How can it be a comeback when she had an album last year?