Would you be sad if the show described as not being 'on its best form' by Channel 4's chief creative officer Jay Hunt was pulled?

Now is not a good time to be a real-life teenager who enjoys watching fictional teenagers on Channel 4. E4's Skins will clatter to a halt after a final series next year, and now Hollyoaks appears to be in trouble. Storylines are drying up, fans are less than enthralled, and Channel 4's chief creative officer Jay Hunt has admitted that the show "isn't on its best form".

So what should Channel 4 do with Hollyoaks? Might it be time to put the show out of its misery? Its had a good run – in September it will have been on air for 17 years, just four fewer than Brookside managed – and introduced us to characters as indelible as Jambo, Alvin Stardust and the little boy who cried when Max died. If Hollyoaks does succumb to viewer apathy, at least it'll be fondly remembered.

Or at least parts of it will. Because it's aimed at younger viewers, it's only natural that audiences will eventually outgrow it. And, like everything from Grange Hill to Blue Peter to the NME, there's an inclination to believe that it has gone downhill since your day. Being an old man, I haven't watched Hollyoaks with any real regularity since the days of Jeremy Edwards and Terri Dwyer. But that doesn't mean that the subsequent generations – the one where everyone became perma-tanned and blonde, the one where every episode opened with a montage set to a terrible indie song, the one with Darren Day, the one where everybody was suddenly a murderer – weren't as good. With the possible exception of the Darren Day one, obviously.

As Hunt pointed out in her defence of Hollyoaks, it's only natural that long-running shows endure periods of ebb and flow. EastEnders is in a similar dip at the moment, partly because most scenes consist of Ben Mitchell and his trainee grim reaper friend Jay silently staring at a wall. It'll pick up again, because it always does. Towards the end of last year, Hollyoaks's viewing figures were a great deal higher than they are now.

But there's a reason why they have fallen. Watching even one recent episode of Hollyoaks is interminable, which makes viewing an entire Sunday omnibus completely soul-sapping. The storylines are almost nonexistent – a couple of weeks ago there was a woolly lesbian plot that wouldn't have been shocking even a decade ago, and this week's batch of episodes largely involve a man with a ridiculous moustache swivelling his eyes from side to side like a knackered Action Man. If Hollyoaks continues to freefall like this, then it deserves to go. And if it does, it'll have nobody to blame but itself.

Of course, it'll be sad. Especially for poor old Tony. He's been there right from the start, his eyes clearly set on a lifetime of being Cheshire's Ken Barlow. Being an ineffectual, floppy-haired buffoon is all he knows. If he can't pop up a couple of times a week and mumble listlessly about insurance policies, he'll probably wither and die. But if Hollyoaks can't get its act together soon, he'll just be collateral damage. Maybe it's time to pack them all on to a coach and drive them off a cliff.

But what do you think? Are we misjudging Hollyoaks? If it was axed, would you be sad? Leave your thoughts below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/ ... -hollyoaks