TV festivals to celebrate Hollyoaks’ 25 Years

The serial will be celebrated at the BFI and Radio Times Television Festival as well as the Pilot Light TV Festival.

Channel 4’s Chester based serial Hollyoaks marks two and a half decades on air this October and as part of the shows anniversary two television events will mark the big 25.

Produced by Lime Pictures the storylines follow the lives of those who live and work in a small village.

Running from the 17th to 19th April the BFI and Radio Times Television festival is the first to reflect on what started as a youth-aimed saga that has turned into a socially aware continuous drama.

The BFI and Radio Times will look back at the cutting edge soap opera which has made it its mission to start conversations on big issues, with a panel including executive producer Bryan Kirkwood and cast members Gary Lucy (Luke Morgan), Talia Grant (Brooke Hathaway) and Rishi Nair (Sami Maalik).

The BFI and Radio Times event is presented in partnership with Pilot Light TV Festival, who will present a Hollyoaks session at HOME, Manchester as part of their own festival that takes place from May 7th to 10th.

The soap is set in the fictional borough of Hollyoaks in Chester and was first broadcast on October 23th, 1995. It started with just seven characters and now has almost 50.

Socially aware plots have included bringing the production many firsts such as it being the only soap to tackle male rape (twice). In 2000, Gary Lucy’s character Luke Morgan became involved in a male rape storyline and John Paul McQueen, played by James Sutton, who saw his attacker put behind bars in 2014.

Hollyoaks was also the first soap to have a gay wedding. The happy couple John Paul and Ste Hay wed on Christmas Day in 2014. In 2015, Ste Hay, played by Kieron Richardson, became the first gay character on a soap to be HIV positive.