Hannah Cheers, the executive producer of Hollyoaks, has announced that the soap will experience a one-year time leap this autumn.
Channel 4 recently announced that starting in September, episodes of the soap will be reduced from five to three, resulting in the loss of 135 jobs.
The new transmission schedule of three episodes per week will require a smaller cast, prompting the use of a time leap to address the upcoming changes in the show.
Until now Crossroads is the only UK soap to have ever permanently skipped the build-up to a future point in time when it jumped a year in the plots in January 2003. In the past there have been rare instances where EastEnders, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks have included scenes that flash forward to a future moment before reverting back to the present day.
Cheers hailed the move as “bold” and “daring” and said it “sums Hollyoaks up perfectly”.
She explained:
“When we started talking about the move to three episodes a week, we realised we needed a mechanism through which to transition our stories and characters and we kept coming back to this one.
“The new three-episode pattern offers us a different model of storytelling, which means we will see characters on screen for much longer. Our viewers are really smart; in order to serve them well, we need to kick off this new structure in a meaningful way.
“Fast-forwarding the show permanently by a year presents us with unlimited story possibilities. We are now a streaming-first soap and can lean into less-restricting and conventional structures.”
Cheers added that “reducing the team in size is a tough consequence of this transition”.
“It’s not kind to our characters or our audience to have a drawn-out stream of goodbyes on screen. We believe this creative approach will celebrate the uniqueness of Hollyoaks and will serve and honour our amazing characters – throwing us forward into exciting new territory as we pave the way to our 30th anniversary in 2025.”
Hollyoaks currently airs Monday-Friday at 7pm on E4 with first look episodes on Channel 4 streaming.
