 Hollyoaks is a British TV soap opera, that takes a mundane look at the lives, loves and careers of a group of teenage friends and their families as they graduate through GCSE s, A-Levels and College into the world of work. first broadcast on 23 October 1995, on the Channel 4 network. Originally devised by Phil Redmond, who also devised shows such as Brookside and Grange Hill, the program is set in and around the fictional Chester suburb of Hollyoaks and is centered around a former 1950s technical college which is now a college of higher education called Hollyoaks Community College (often mistaken for the real-life University of Chester), with the characters and main target audience generally being in their late teens or early twenties.