"Hollyoaks: After Hours" (2004) TV series

Creator:

Phil Redmond

Release Date:

5 July 2004 (UK)

Genre:

Drama

Cast

Marcus Patric	...	Ben Davies
Matt Milburn	...	Joe Spencer
Andrew McNair	...	Dan Hunter (as Andy McNair)
Kevin Sacre	...	Jake Dean
Gemma Atkinson	...	Lisa Hunter
Ben Joiner	...	Jay
Caprice Bourret	...	Saskia (as Caprice)

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Filming Locations:

Chester, Cheshire, England, UK

Company:

Mersey Television

Movie Connections:

Spin off from "Hollyoaks" (1995)

Fit for nothing more than an obscure foreign channel!

To put if bluntly, I thought watching this was a sheer waste of an evening. The plot was overtly clichéd in every way possible. The biggest problem with After Hours is that the so-called producers made every effort to shove in as many phallic jokes, cheap toilet humour, rubbish plot line about parachuting and the suave but dangerous hotel guest bedding the shy, needy waitress - and somehow we are expected to enjoy this. Unbelievably, UNBELIVEABLY, this has somehow made the generic Hollyoaks look sophisticated and well-structured, which is isn't, but in comparison, anything would look good. This late show was also hypocritical: the producers overloaded with swearing, which actually may have been to their benefit - I mean, it's not like a Hollyoaks script has ever been of any worth in its content despite all attempts at puns and lewd metaphors; I guess the swearing just covered this up a bit and was the most intelligent thing to be said in it. Hollyoaks features homosexual guys all the time in order to reel in on the vagaries of popular teen issues and tries to profess a positive attitude to being gay and accepting oneself, which the characters all agree with usually, and yet in this late edition nearly every other sentence had one guy denying he was gay at the expense of the reflection of "real lads" having a good laugh and a joke before a pint of bitter and some good, tough beef. Awful. They used denigrating words such as "poof" which in the proper context is understandable, guys are like this sure, but it just shows how Hollyoaks as a show is fickle with its beliefs and values and probably explains why, at the annual Soap Awards, the cast just turn up for the free ham sandwiches and milk and by rights ought to leave before the winners have even been announced; before they don't have a leg to stand on if they carry on like this.

What a waste of an evening. Once again, Hollyoaks, you express everything that is undesirable and feeble in modern television.