The Sugababes are back in the charts. Or rather, a song they released last year is back in the charts.
About You Now was a number one for them last autumn, and the only reason people can think of for it landing back in at number 36 is: Hollyoaks.
You see, it was used during the funeral of Max Cunningham and the likes of itunes saw a real surge in downloads for the track afterwards.
Proof, if it were needed, of the power of soaps? In the same way Coronation Street holds sway in middle England, as shown when Tony Blair joined the debate on whether Deirdrie should be released from prison, Hollyoaks obviously knows how to touch a nerve with a younger audience.
What Hollyoaks has done in the last couple of weeks is give a real masterclass to other soaps on how to keep the audiences hooked.
First Max pops off, and now Jack Osborne. Two deaths of such key players in as many weeks is too much even for master of misery Eastenders to cope with, but Hollyoaks is still gripping.
Soap weddings (such as Max's to Steph the other week) normally do one of two things, which then lead to a third thing. They either result in a much-loved couple from the street/square/made up suburb of Chester going off into the sunset for a honeymoon after a minor comedy hitch on the way, or they involve infidelity being revealed at the altar.
Either way, the result is normally a ratings winner for which the viewers forgive it a few dud weeks afterwards as script writers struggle to come up with something to match that.
So how typically Hollyoaks it was for everyone's favourite guilty pleasure to throw the soap rule book out the window. Yes, there was a happy marriage (ie Max and Steph got out of the church as Mr and Mrs Cunningham) but then Max was killed by a drunk driver.
There was infidelity exposed too - but not between the happy couple. Twas the priest who was exposed, by Moira, the mother of oh-so-stereotyped gay teenager John-Paul, who had found out that the priest had done more than just expose himself to her son.
Rather neatly, the drunk driver was a spurned lover of either the priest or Jean Paul, and in his angst at being told the unholy trinity couldn't continue, he drove, drunk, and killed Max, arguably one of the show's best characters.
If my knowledge of the unholy trinity sounds a bit vague, it's because I stopped watching Hollyoaks about three months ago, not long after it justifiably won the soap awards. It felt as if it had gone off the boil a bit. This often happens when soaps win awards. They normally do one of two things: take an age to get back on to an even keel during which the Press ask "What has gone wrong with XXXX?" (Eastenders/Coronation Street). Or they try and bounce back with something so absurdly dramatic it's just daft (Hello Emmerdale, I be talking about you lot.)
Hollyoaks, however, bounced back in style so many viewers could empathise with. The joy of marriage, the intensity of losing someone, the fact a Dad died pushing his son Tom out of the way of a speeding-spurned-lover-of-a-just-outed-Priest. Ok, perhaps the last bit is unbelievable, but Hollyoaks have built that story up so slowly it feels as if it was a fabric of the soap from day one.
In such grief-stricken circumstances, quality of acting often goes out of the window. Understated grief and numbness is replaced by shrieking by actors trying to distract the viewer from the fact they can't make themselves cry. Not on Hollyoaks. OB, making his return from London for his best mate's wedding (surely Max and OB have made the best acting double act in soapland for many years) clutched his mate as he died. Steph maybe went a little over the top as she screamed "noooooo" but by that point they'd muted the sound in favour of music, and given she was wearing a pink wedding dress, perhaps she can be excused a bit of the absurd.
But the true star was young Tom. By my reckoning that's at least four members of his family he has lost, but rather than be cast in the role of Damien, he's been a superb little actor whose short sentences "Make him wake up" seem to sum up whatever situation he's been faced with. In the last 18 months he's watched Max almost die at the hands of evil Claire, been taken into care, played a great part in getting Steph and Max together, and now, watch Max die as he saved his life.
He wasn't the only one who saw Max die. The whole viewing nation saw the actual impact. Not some close up shot of a face followed by a thud, or a flying newspaper/bunch of flowers/cuddly toy in the air. Hollyoaks actually showed Max being hit by the car. Dramatic stuff.
And they replicated the emotion v drama mix with the death of Jack - although this has the added dimension of a whodunnit as well. Was it the son, Darren, or the foster son, whose name I can't remember?
And, at the same time, we've got the copper's son doing cold turkey and the return of the original female doubleact in Hollyoaks - Cindy and Mandy.
It all sounds too much, but Hollyoaks pulls it off in style. Corrie, Eastenders et al: Watch and Learn - and not just on how to use music properly.
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