Once upon a time this was the best soap on television. Once upon a time it was the only programme of its kind to successfully mix improbability and wit and come up with endlessly entertaining drama. And once there were as many reasons as there were names in the cast list to set the video if you weren’t going to be around to catch one of its episodes.

Nowadays, though, Hollyoaks is but a bleached fossil of its previously wholesome, vivacious, living self. Amateurish, po-faced and pointless, its storylines seem to say nothing of consequence about anything in particular. Episodes blow up, blow over and blow out with ever-accelerating contrivance and corn. Everything that was so carefully and diligently put together during its groundbreaking early days has fallen apart.

The reasons are varied, but all have taken root during the last few years as the programme’s tally of characters and plots has climbed in tandem with the number of transmitted weekly episodes.

Take the cast itself. Hollyoaks has long embraced the mantra that gritty doesn’t have to mean ugly. But while the show’s present incarnation may be easy on the eye, it’s definitely not easy on the ear. The dialogue – its construction and execution – is probably the worst of any British soap on television today. Not only do the words its characters say bear little resemblance to the patterns and inflections of ordinary speech, but the delivery of the words has an equally long-lost relationship with reality.

In fact, rarely can there have been an instance of so many members of a single cast not knowing how to speak on screen. Dialogue is alternately shouted or muttered. Few actors appear to know how to open their mouths properly. Lines are bawled at inappropriately loud volume or tail off at the end into an incoherent mumble.

You could argue this is something of a virtue when considering sentences of the calibre of, “I need you so much and you’ve done this and I hate you – I HATE YOU!” or “Yer crazy! Just like yer murderin’ brother!” Admittedly even the most skilled of actors would have trouble imbuing such lines with even a semblance of dignity. Yet coherent dialogue, flawed or otherwise, must be the motor of any self-respecting recurring drama series, for fear of the entire enterprise grinding to an insurmountable halt and being blessed with the impression of going nowhere.

The show has never made any bones about its policy towards casting on looks first, experience second (though in the past the two seemed to be treated with equal reverence). Another curse of relying too much on the former, however, is the fact that even with the most sympathetic script and direction in the world, you can’t tolerate incompetence, or for that matter incompatibility, for that long.

Under both these auspices Hollyoaks has seen fit to shed dozens of cast during the last few years, and in the 12 months to date the turnover has reached epic proportions. One offshoot of this is that the show’s latest title sequence, an ugly 1980s-looking effort only introduced in late 2005, is already hopelessly out-of-date and full of characters who have either left or been killed off. It’s a problem that has plagued the series throughout its life by dint of the titles, right from day one, being a showcase for faces rather than atmosphere (Coronation Street) or location (EastEnders).

A second far more significant but no less recurring consequence is the impact upon the composition of the show’s stock of characters. Whenever a culling takes place in Hollyoaks it always atomises an already loosely-affiliated cast. The shedding of dead wood breaks up relationships, friendships and above all families, leaving behind an evermore disparate bunch of characters who have little in common and no cause to come into each other’s contact.

As such over the years the show has accumulated a ludicrous number of unrelated personalities for whom increasingly unlikely reasons must be invented for them to a) stay put and b) fall into the company of other remnants of broken families and hastily-concluded liaisons, regardless of respective past histories. This wasn’t such an issue when Hollyoaks first began; lately, however, it has driven a coach and horses through the show’s tried and tested tradition for concentrating on the fortunes of four or five core families.

This situation reached its extreme with the Morgans, a clan of six first introduced into the show in 1999 but who were sequentially and individually sent packing until only the youngest daughter remained, disobeying all natural instinct and logic by choosing to hang about on screen until Christmas 2005. Something similar has happened more recently with the Burton family.

One by one they have been shown the door until now only the son Justin survives, kept on presumably because his storyline, a clandestine relationship with his teacher, is proving popular with audiences.

Such practices have transformed Hollyoaks from a recognisable if exaggerated reflection of society into a desperately unlikely, near-cartoonish take on modern Britain. And the evisceration goes on. In this particular episode yet another family, the Ashworths, were shown divided and living apart thanks to a son’s indiscretion. Though even they cannot compete with the newest family of all, the Valentines, who went one better during their very first week on screen when their mum was run over.

Even the vocabulary of the show has been distorted out of all proportion. Once the programme was peopled with characters called Julie, Matt and Luke. Now the likes of Foz, Mercedes, John-Paul, Myra and Carmel walk the village streets, as if the production team have decided to start shooting a load of Eldorado scripts for want of anything better to do.

Hollyoaks has always painted life in ultra-broad strokes and rendered the most mundane of emotions in over-the-top jamborees of shagging and shouting. And it would be deluded in the extreme to deny the series has had something slightly preposterous about it from day one. But there used to be a sense that its absurdity was grounded in calculated irreverence. Storylines uncoiled with more than a hint of a purposeful raised eyebrow and knowing sleight-of-hand.

This whimsical implausibility has now been replaced by the plain implausible. There doesn’t seem to be any substantive motive or design underpinning the show’s relentless dramatic convulsions, not even one born of harmless self-deprecation. Things happen because they need to happen to fill up 22 minutes of airtime every weeknight. Things don’t happen because they make good television.

Such a state of affairs has handed the show a ghastly air of irrelevance, boosted further by the way it ditches plots and characters with such speed and disdain as to positively discourage dedicated viewing. Why bother investing in the show long-term, the production team seem to be implying, if we’re not investing anything in the long-term ourselves? Again, Hollyoaks has always been about programme-making on the fly – one of the reasons for its 11 years on air has been its low overheads – but not until the last few years has that virtuous expediency been expanded to incorporate the pursuit of the least worst option when it comes to telling a story.

In truth the show has never got over the demands of running five nights a week and the accompanying upheaval in personnel on and off screen, factors wholly related to the concurrent axing (in autumn 2003) of Mersey Television’s other Channel 4 soap, Brookside. Indeed, the person credited with writing this episode, Maurice Bessman, was one of several instantly transferred to Hollyoaks after years penning scripts for Brookside regardless of experience writing for a young audience or consideration of tone of voice.

His efforts tonight – an episode devoid of any humour whatsoever, no apparent logical structure (characters were seen in school then at home then back in school while other pupils never left a classroom) and one where everyone was arguing with each other – were sadly par for the course. There weren’t even appearances for any of the show’s dwindling band of veterans, upon whose shoulders so much of the responsibility for the programme’s survival now rests, and whose arrival in a scene can still occasionally give rise to flashes of the humour and energy of old.

“Enough is enough,” barked one character with singular appropriateness just before the credits rolled. “We’re leaving. Tomorrow!” So the revolving door turns again, spewing out more faces, washing up new ones, never ceasing its joyless work for fear that, were it ever to become stationery, the hinges would come off and the whole edifice would begin to crumble. But in truth that is already happening, and the door keeps on turning because it’s all its owners have ever known.

Frankly I found it an enormous disappointment. I wasn’t expecting much to be honest, perhaps some amusing high jinx and some pretty views of Barcelona, but the storyline was practically lifted from Grange Hill‘s back-catalogue; chases with the local lads, not being able to convert to the local currency and trying to chat up girls. The worst part was the tagged in plotline regarding Lorraine’s estranged son and his father who won’t allow her access to the child. It just stretched credibility and was handled absolutely ham fistedly. So unrealistic was it, that one almost expected the Prince of Moldovia to waft by.

The problem was not the storyline itself, but as far as I can recall there had been no build up or indication that she had a child. Lorraine has always been the manipulative bitch, using whoever or whatever to get her way – now she’s a caring mother, wronged by her ex-husband. The switch to show a different side of a personality is a difficult to achieve, especially one as clearly defined as Lorraine’s, but here it was dumped on us without a by-your-leave and without any sort of subtlety. After setting up Lewis for blackmail, to let on about her situation so quickly was not true to her character or even necessary to the plot, just a quick gimmick, a token demonstration that she has a soft side, and one I would expect to be quickly forgotten when normal service resumes. In fact I would expect the fact she has a son to be dropped as soon as possible to allow the evil witch act to be brought once more to the forefront.

Another thing that puzzled me about the programme is that nobody actually seems to like each other much. A large bunch of lads in Spain yet none of them seem to know each other particularly well or get on. Within Chester it’s fair enough; friends of friends who know enough to talk to each other in the pub, but to go to someone’s stag party abroad shows the limitations of this kind of venture as Tony and Sol stood out like sore thumbs, outsiders to the group, whilst the younger Max and OB could ( and perhaps should ) have been somewhere else altogether. Although their antics were amusing, they aren’t really friends of Finn because in the regular episodes Finn doesn’t really have friends.

Indicative of these late night excursion was the inclusion of more earthy and, some would argue, realistic speech. Yet this rang just hollow, as swearing was clumsily crow-barred into the dialogue. It contributed nothing to the programme. For me it would have been refreshing to live without it, most adults use of swear words are so mundane that any surprise or shock value is lost by the sheer repetition of them in a normal conversation.

All in all this episode was a bit of a waste, with so much happening that just didn’t work or contribute to the overall themes of the programme. I felt that the writers were trying too hard to make something of this special edition, a contrast to the rape storyline. The problem is that the characters floundered around in unfamiliar surroundings with a weak plot that over-dramatised events. It simply highlighted for me that the programme is too variable; when on form it’s the best soap around, but all too often it falls short.

Instead we had a bunch of the cast jetting off to a chilly-looking Barcelona for a stag weekend. Luckily this group included some of the very best Hollyoaks characters – Luke, Finn, Max, OB – but sadly some of the very worst – principally Tony, plus the unfailingly irritating Carol. And although the whole thing was presented as a conventional spin-off – Finn announcing to the rest of the gang (and us) “Whatever happens in Barcelona stays in Barcelona …”, all of the series’ perennial concerns reared their heads: Lewis’ affairs (business and emotional); Tony’s schemes to ruin Finn’s marriage; and Max & OB’s raging libido. Note: these lads have a permanent hard-on, which has at least made for an amusing stream of Carry On gags over the past few weeks of the “something’s come up” variety. Other regulars along for the ride included Luke, star of the first Hollyoaks late nighter earlier in the year, but this time in very much a secondary role (getting pissed, mostly).

It all made for a highly entertaining hour and a half. The somewhat ludicrous nature of the scrapes and mini-crises the characters contrived to find themselves in were more than compensated for by that one element which sets Hollyoaks up above all other soap operas: its humour. The cast is lucky to boast a fair few fine comic actors who handle both verbal and visual jokes superbly well: the obvious duo of Max (Matt Littler) and OB (Darren Jeffries) who must be given their own spin-off show sooner or later, together with the more laconic, rasping wit of Finn (James Redmond). He is a great creation, whose response to people questioning his decision to marry someone almost twice his age is invariably an amusingly offensive insult or dry wisecrack.

With the comic lines came comic situations (sometimes verging on the tragicomic) all meticulously well-structured into an unfolding sequence of mayhem. So we had fights with the locals, endless boozing, cross-dressing, an obligatory chase round the back-streets, stolen money, compromising photos, drinking competitions, impotency, nicked transit vans, endless interrupted sexual liaisons, wild leaps off the side of cruise ships, child abduction, an arrow up the arse and a blow job from a transvestite.

Best of all, however, was loads of swearing. Where to begin? “Hello? Earth to dickhead?” “My arse is really stinging.” “Old soft-bollocks here.” Perhaps best of all, though, was the long-overdue re-appearance on telly of the seminal “Knobhead!” OK, so it’s cheap and obvious, a self-indulgence merited by the late hour; but it’s still great to hear the characters freed by the watershed and able to say what you think they so really want to say at 6.30pm but sadly can’t.

Some of the goings-on were handled quite sensitively and with subtlety – Max’s coyness about his hitherto lack of sexual stamina resolved in a sympathetic way rather than via a giant orgasm of bravado and triumphalism. There was also time for discussion of the ongoing recuperation of Luke following his court case, with hints of just how unresolved and unsettled his feelings still are to everyone around him.

Lewis meanwhile is clearly heading for his decline and fall, with the appearance on the scene of his lover Lorraine, even wooing and bedevilling his every move out here in another country. Significantly, as with the other mini-storylines, this entanglement wasn’t wrapped up in the 90 minutes – far from it: the drama will simply pick up once more next time, back in that quiet suburb of Chester.

This was an entirely justified, hugely entertaining and well-made episode, excellently written by Allan Swift and directed by Peter Rose. The trip abroad seemed well worth it – and even better, the action wasn’t limited to three or four main settings (i.e. The bar. The bedroom. The café.) Thanks to that famous efficiency of Mersey Television, the drama ranged from the top of castles, football stadiums, alleyways, restaurants, bars, clubs and hotels down to the seafront and dockside. A fine advert for the city – if not for its people, who were portrayed as either hot-headed lotharios or Godfather-esque schemers who all dressed in black and had greasy hair.

It’s been a great year for Hollyoaks. 1999 ended with a bus blowing up killing off one of the series’ most annoying characters (Rob) and marking the end of a troublesome era on the show. Since then there’s been one hell of a renaissance. It’s ironic that Phil Redmond’s two Channel 4 soaps have completely repositioned themselves over the last 12 months to become mirror images of each other – with the result that Hollyoaks ends 2000 utterly accomplished, commanding and mature; and Brookside trivial, childish, and pointless.

From that moment onwards things have so improved that Hollyoaks continues to be the best soap opera on telly at the moment. The daily episode trick was repeated again this week to mark the trial of the three male youths who had raped one of the show’s principal characters, Luke Morgan, back in March of this year. With a keen eye for continuity, the same court judge – played by Colin Baker – turned up again to preside over affairs, but what followed was a world away from the lightweight laughable showdown of a few years back; this time round, complex characterisations, divided loyalties and meticulously plotted storylines combined to make this week one of the best in the soap’s history.

Since the moment Luke first admitted to his brother that he had been raped, Hollyoaks moved into unknown territory. Not only was this a dramatic dilemma unique to British telly but it was to be explored and played out in a programme aimed squarely at teenage viewers (though clearly watched by a much larger age group). After resorting to a one-off late-night special to depict the rape itself, the series had switched straight back to its usual 6.30pm slot, but mercifully made virtually no compromises – the rape was discussed, openly, in detail, and in incredibly emotional scenes.

The weeks following Luke’s admission were gruelling viewing: relentlessly downbeat, with little humour to be found to leaven the mood. Then the show entered a weird period of a couple of months when, after deciding to press charges against his attackers, Luke disappeared off on holiday to France (to “prepare” for the forthcoming trial). Hollyoaks suddenly became dangerously dull and more importantly extremely unfunny. Even at its darkest moments the show had still found space for bleak humour or earthy farce, mostly provided by the resident clowns Max and OB. But after Max faked his A-Level results they ran off to Blackpool, leaving behind more shallow, objectionable characters such as the irritating cluster of lazy students who’d somehow all collectively decided to stay in Hollyoaks over the college holidays rather than go back home. How convenient for the series that storylines were found to allow them to stay in Chester (and avoid having the cast drop by a half in size). How grim for viewers, however, that the storylines were so tenuous and far-fetched – resorting at one point to that stock cliché, the “visiting film crew” who’ve suddenly decided to drop by and shoot a major movie right in their neighbourhood.

Still, there were some memorable moments during the summer – one character necking a potency pill and walking around for four hours hiding his hard-on behind a heart-shaped cushion; a funeral ending up in farce when an undertaker hit the vicar on the back of his head with the coffin; and best of all, a Carry On style run-around the Blackpool seafront when Max’s Dad came looking for revenge.

Once Luke re-appeared the show regained its momentum, and built slowly, carefully and grimly to a climax. The trial ran over the course of the week, with each day featuring a key stage of proceedings (Luke’s evidence, the cross-examination of his attacker, and so on). All these courtroom scenes avoided the usual lazy devices – emotional hysterics from the witnesses, shock revelations, painfully unconvincing climaxes to accompany the end of each episode. Instead, we had Luke and his family trying to work through their own set of differences inside and outside the court – in particular, Luke’s father persisting in believing his son had no chance of winning and trying to persuade him to drop the case. Without solid support from anyone save his brother Adam and ex-girlfriend Mandy, Luke had to internalise all his aggression while still trying to face cross-examination from the obligatory mean and nasty defence lawyer.

When the verdict came, it was handled with subtlety and inspiration. We saw the defendants sent down, but there was no moment of triumph for Luke, no valediction, no punching the air. Instead he sat in silence, almost in incomprehension, crying to himself, and afterwards had to take himself away from his family to get his head round what had happened. His father’s lack of faith in him seems to have left a deep scar, almost as visceral as that of the rape itself; all credit, once more, to the actor playing Luke – Gary Lucy – for his incredible performance, plus those around him in his family and friends.

A mark of the imagination and skill of Hollyoaks‘ production team, not least this week’s trio of writers (Anna Clements, Chris Parker and Neil Jones) is their concern for sketching out storylines over the long-term. Occasional incidents that initially appear trivial slowly take on a coherence and significance that builds up to a terrific climax. So it was this week; for not only did all the simmering anger, insecurity and fear of both Luke and his divided family explode with the commencement of the trial; but a web of various plots and incidents neatly came together to provide a parallel dénouement. This centred around the night-club Lewis and Finn had slaved to set up for many months. Drug dealings, betrayal, blackmail, violence and sex conspired to make this the site for just as much action, fun and intrigue as events in the Chester courtrooms. Another mark of the show’s brilliance has been the way Lewis, nominally an all-round good guy and affable character, has gradually lost all control of his life so as to reach the stage where he ends up lashing out and physically beating his partner Ruth. If Lewis had been deliberately presented as essentially “bad”, a rotten apple, the obvious villain of the piece, his attacks on Ruth would be more easy for the viewer to rationalise and confront – of course he’s beating her up, he would do, he’s that sort of bloke. Except he’s not – and we’re made to watch one of the nicest residents of Hollyoaks suddenly snap and defy all expectations, swapping engaging banter for evil battering.

Throughout this week, these two deeply serious and involving storylines were – in typical Hollyoaks style – contrasted with some shameless bawdy fun: a chaotic “naturist” party being held at the college by two students out to get an eyeful of naked females parading en mass in front of their twitching libidos. This sort of obvious, in your face, inescapably amusing set-up – of the kind that remarkably still only ever seem to happen in soap operas – was just the right tonic to allow the other sombre, sober storylines to be appreciated all the more.

It’s clear the series is not going to just forget about the rape now a sentence has been passed and continue as if all’s right with the world (no short-termist resolutions here, as in the recent Coronation Street special). Luke’s life has been fundamentally, irrevocably, changed; the trial and its verdict only one small part of the process of coming to terms with the future. It is this, above all, that marks Hollyoaks out as something really special, something almost unique, on British TV: this persistent acknowledgement of how “real time” works, how crises and breakdowns and traumas ebb and flow, and how they don’t blow in, blow up and blow out at breakneck speed. Phil Redmond redefined kids’ television in the 1970s with Grange Hill; adult soap opera in the 1980s with Brookside; and now (at last) with Hollyoaks he’s done something magical once again.

For quite a while now, Hollyoaks has been the best soap opera on TV.

Through a deft combining of convention – tragedy, farce, melodrama, comedy, misunderstanding and spite – with quality scripts and performances, it’s far and away the freshest, most involving, most relevant and exciting continuing contemporary serial on television.Hollyoaks is on a roll – better than it’s ever been in its four and a half year existence; and such a supremacy has been secured thanks to the careful development of a number of highly visceral plotlines, chief of which has been the graphic presentation of the rape of one of the male characters, Luke Morgan (played exceptionally well by Gary Lucy).

As noted elsewhere, the occasion of this British TV first was afforded a late-night one-off timeslot to allow a level of imagery and language vital for such an act to be rendered convincingly on the small screen. At the time, I applauded almost unreservedly the whole late-night episode, only tempering my comments with a nagging concern as to how the consequences to such a significant event could be played out at Hollyoaks‘ normal 6.30pm hour. Surely such a early evening slot would preclude even the vaguest talk of “male rape”, let alone permit adequate license for an in-depth consideration of the aftermath?

I’ve had my doubts assuaged; over the course of last week’s three episodes – all at 6.30pm – Luke at last admitted publicly for the first time he had been raped; in a number of superbly played sequences with his older brother Adam (David Brown), Luke recounted the circumstances in which he had been attacked, prompting moments of such tenderness, overwhelming emotion and catharsis as to make for some of the most moving and affecting scenes in Hollyoaks ever. Both characters’ behaviour and reactions were wholly convincing and finely acted; Adam’s responses – “I want to be near you” – not in the slightest bit over the top or corny. Absolutely engrossing television.

There had been a very slow but controlled build up to this admission, testing the patience of the long-term viewer as Luke became increasingly isolated within his own predicament and semi-coherent world. While at times it was frustrating that the programme makers seemed destined almost never to resolve this storyline, in retrospect it all made sense: each week, they’d either take something away from Luke’s life (his place in the football team; his girlfriend; his drivers’ license; his best friend; his chance to pass his A Levels) or add something worse to it (his parents squabbling; his best friend hooking up with his ex; his younger sister both pestering him and running amok at school). This then culminated in Luke attempting suicide; and the circumstances he then found himself in – trapped in a hospital bed, conscious of having pulled back from death at the last second, his brother desperate to know what happened – now providing the right moment for a tearful revelation.

Last week’s writers – all female (Lucy Gough, Anna McHugh and Deborah Wain) advanced this particular storyline in just the right manner at just the right time – crucially, just before its potency began to decline. They’ve now set up a dynamic and tantalising new set of possibilities (will Luke’s Dad accept the truth of what happened, now that he and the whole family know? Where to go from here?)

With Luke’s face set in an unflinching scowl for the last eight weeks, and the grim mood compounded by other similarly downbeat storylines such as a couple trying (and failing) to come to terms with an unplanned pregnancy, it is to Hollyoaks laudable credit that it has continued to counterpoise such evisceration with a wonderfully endearing and unashamedly natural sense of humour. Though the series has some rather obvious comic character creations, they are possessive of a level of self-deprecation, irony and above all a knowing awareness which surpasses anything to be found elsewhere in a British soap.

Chief protagonists here are best friends Max and OB; sixth-formers in the mould of a post-1990s Grange Hill Ziggy and Robbie, engaged in the pursuit of pleasure (via their recently acquired “passion wagon”, a decrepit orange camper van) and money (a series of ludicrous schemes) via a fine line in witty banter (mostly centreing on each other’s sexual experience, or lack of it: “The thought of you bonking outside my house doesn’t fill me with much confidence.”) Their comic interludes throw the more serious scenes into even sharper relief; but neither of these contrasts are less convincing or relevant as the other – both are just as important to sustaining the delicate shape of Hollyoaks‘ narrative.

It is beholden, then, of Phil Redmond and his team to prolong this period of greatness for as long as they can. Reviewing both the short term evidence – this week’s fine episodes – and that of the long term – the careful dramatic arc of the series’ last few months – suggests that Hollyoaks could and should remain one of the best, if not the best, soaps showing this year.

Channel 4 played a game this week with regular viewers of its teen-orientated soapHollyoaks. They simultaneously encouraged a certain demographic to tune in for this special late night not-in-front-of-the-kids extended episode, while endeavouring to convince another opposing age group that no such programme actually existed.

Established conventions as to what can and cannot be shown on national television at certain hours forced the station to embark on such bizarre, torturous behaviour: because Phil Redmond’s normally bland and anodyne series was tackling (and breaking) one of the last remaining taboo’s of British TV: male rape, and was going to do so in as graphic, overwhelming and unequivocal way as possible.

So, wisely the normal 6.30pm time-slot was abandoned; with it, the kind of restrictive narrative such an early evening time slot permits and expects. Instead, a late night scheduling afforded the programme makers and writer Neil Jones scope to show the correct tension, atmosphere and visual realism to carry this important landmark television event off. And it was a very worthwhile, engaging and affecting piece of drama – deftly and convincingly handled, and above all endearingly acted.

Perhaps it was the nature of the occasion, the knowledge of the gravity of the context within which they were performing, but the cast of Hollyoaks, admittedly not renowned for emotional depth and subtle characterisation, were by and large superb. Special mention must above all go to Gary Lucy playing Luke Morgan, victim of a long-term bullying campaign orchestrated by rival football team players that reached its terrible resolution here on a rusty car bonnet. Crucially, Luke was not and never has been depicted in this series as a weak, ineffectual, stereotyped “victim” – if anything, the reverse, a bluff and quietly dominating presence on screen. So to watch his gradual disintegration and protracted slide into confusion and terror was all the more powerful and shocking. Lucy, required to move from brazen self-confidence to complete trauma in the space of one hour, gave a commendable performance throughout that will stick in the memory for a long time.

Other supposedly “risky” secondary storylines also involved sex, but inverted so the act resembled the unfettered pursuit of pleasure and emotional release – a carthatic, open-air consummation on the one hand, an embarrassing first-time fumble on the other. There was also something wonderfully refreshing in having characters swear when they’re in trouble, rather than using pathetically tame, mild profanity. Hearing the first “shit” was like letting fresh air into a stuffy room.

The key question will be when and how the series tackles the after-effects of the rape, most pertinently the manner in which Luke is seen to “deal” with the attack, express/confide in other characters and so on; for it is likely that, unless space is made for another late-night one-off, or – better – a short mini-series is planned to bring this storyline to some sort of half-closure, a 6.30pm timeslot will not allowed for the degree of intimacy and vital realism that kind of post-mortem needs and which I am sure the relevant cast members of Hollyoaks could provide.