Hollyoaks is a British television soap opera first broadcast 23 October, 1995, on the Channel 4 network. Originally devised by Phil Redmond, who also devised shows such as Brookside and Grange Hill, the programme is set in and around the fictional Chester suburb of Hollyoaks and is centred 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.