Hollyoaks goes online to promote safer drinking

Hollyoaks is launching a series of online episodes to enable youth-oriented campaigns to reach their target audience. The Channel 4 soap is producing 12 'webisodes' to run on E4.com next month to support the Know Your Limits campaign, according to reports on broadcastnow.co.uk. Hollyoaks: The Morning After The Night Before has been funded by the Home Office and devised by C4 with Hollyoaks producer Lime Pictures' multiplatform arm, Conker Media. The storyline will follow regular characters Josh and Sasha, who will leave the TV show for a month for a four-week post-exam holiday, which will play out entirely online. The plot also features new character Dave, played by Elliot James Langridge, who will go on to appear in the TV series. The three-to-four minute webisodes will be up on E4.com every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for four weeks, from Monday July 6. In-character blogs will also appear on Bebo. Hollyoaks: The Morning After the Night Before is the first product of Channel 4's newly established cross-platform commissioning structure, headed by Louise Brown. Louise said the project, which also extends to a binge-drinking storyline on-screen from this month, was a potential model for future campaigns with both public and commercial bodies. She said: "It brings together the best of our commissioning, marketing and production partners to create a deeply engaging experience that works across multiple platforms."

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.