Watch the video to find out what viewers thought of programmes including Grand Designs, Hollyoaks, 10 Years Younger, Skins, Dispatches, Come Dine With Me, Supersize vs Superskinny and more.

Do you agree with what the people of Chester had to say? Let us know by rating the video, or posting your comments below.

If you’d like to share your views with The TV Show, visit our Take Part section to see where The Big 4 will be heading later this year. Next month, you’ll find The Big 4 in Canterbury.

Alternatively, you can submit your own videos to The TV Show site.

If you missed the show on Saturday, or would like to watch it again, you can view the full programme here on the blog and let us know what you think. Do you agree with the comments that were made?

Joining Krishnan to talk about Hollyoaks were commissioning editor Camilla Campbell, producer Bryan Kirkwood and actor Barry Sloane, who until recently played bad guy Niall Rafferty on the show. They talked to Krishnan and the audience about how Hollyoaks has changed after 13 years on air, how the show tackles sensitive and controversial issues, and explained why Hollyoaks Later was commissioned.

Also on the show this month was the commissioning editor of Miss Naked Beauty, Walter Iuzzolino. He was joined by the winner of the show, Shona Collins, plus contestants Emily Rainbows and Natasha Crook. Billed as a liberating, modern take on the beauty contest, was Miss Naked Beauty a triumph for Gok Wan, or did Channel 4 end up damaging one of their best brands? Please let us know what you think.

The next edition of The TV Show will be broadcast in February 2009 – if you’d like to join the studio audience please contact thetvshow@princesstv.com.

Despite its 6.30pm slot Hollyoaks doesn’t shy away from difficult contemporary issues and only last week the programme received a Mental Health Media Award (PDF) for Hannah’s anorexia storyline. As a popular teen programme it reaches a large audience, but do you think it offers good role models for young people? Is it the job of a soap opera to do so?

The recent broadcast of Hollyoaks Later has been very successful on E4, reaching an average audience of almost a million, 65% of whom were 16-34 year olds with a further half a million views online.

If you are a Hollyoaks fan, what did you think of Hollyoaks Later? Is it a good idea to try and explore more adult themes in a post watershed slot? Tell us what you think and join us at 3.50pm on Saturday when the TV Show debates the issues on air.

Last year, Stonewall named Hollyoaks its Broadcast of the Year for the the programme’s “sympathetic and convincing handling” of the love affair between characters John-Paul McQueen and Craig Dean. This hugely popular storyline recently concluded, attracting praise from www.afterelton.com and Tim Teeman at The Times, who described Hollyoaks as “…a prince among soaps, a once ugly duckling transformed into a beautiful, if crazed, feather-ruffling swan.”

We have received a mix of comments from viewers about the Hollyoaks storyline. Some have praised the way that sexual stereotypes have been debunked while others have claimed that showing relationships between homosexual characters is inappropriate at the time that Hollyoaks is transmitted. This point was addressed directly by the commissioning team in an earlier blog post, where it was pointed out that relationships are an important part of teenage life and are therefore a perfectly legitimate subject for an early evening show like Hollyoaks, whether homosexual or heterosexual.

Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, a cartoon set in a village only occupied by gays and lesbians, recently prompted a number of gay E4 viewers to write in and tell us how upset they were by a programme that found humour in subjects such as HIV. Make Me a Christian also attracted some criticism from viewers for including a contributor’s opinion that sexuality is something that can be changed.

Arguably the bar has been set high by programmes such as Queer as Folk, which although first broadcast almost ten years ago, is still remembered with fondness and often quoted in research groups when people are asked about programmes which make Channel 4 distinctive. Is this the yardstick against which other programme are measured? What do you think about that way the channel represents gay issues and characters?

If you have watched any of these programmes or any other Channel 4 programme and want to express a view, we would love to hear from you.

Having found a temporary home in the city’s Buchanan Street, The TV Show team asked passers by to share their views on the recent programmes they had either loved or loathed – and they didn’t disappoint.

Take a look at the video to find out what Glasgow viewers really think of programmes including The Secret Millionaire, Hollyoaks, The Genius of Charles Darwin, Ugly Betty, 10 Years Younger, Gok’s Fashion Fix, Dispatches and, of course, Big Brother…

Do you agree with what the people of Glasgow had to say? Let us know by posting your comments below…

If you’d like to share your views with The Big 4, please keep an eye on our Take Part section to find out where it’ll be later this month.

The news that Channel 4 had recently received some complaints about a gay couple, Kieron and John Paul, kissing on Hollyoaks was clearly as surprising to many fans as it was to the programme makers.

Firstly, I’d like to say a massive thank you to everyone for your comments and support (both in the forums and on the TV show site) for Hollyoaks’ recent storyline featuring Kieron and John Paul.  It’s great to see that, despite the few complaints received by Channel 4, in general Hollyoaks fans are supportive of our gay characters and the related storylines.

I was all set to talk about the kiss on The TV Show last week, but I didn’t get to… all because of that pig!

Actually, what I was going to say echoes what has been said in the forums already. Both Channel 4 and the makers of Hollyoaks firmly believe that homosexual and heterosexual relationships should be represented equally. The regulations for what we can show pre-watershed are exactly the same for gay and straight couples in drama or factual programming. Sexuality and how it informs your identity is obviously very important in young people’s lives and as Hollyoaks is aimed at a teenage audience this is not an issue we are going to avoid or water-down unnecessarily.

As viewers of the show will know, Hollyoaks isn’t a children’s programme and has never been marketed as such; we want to provide viewers with relevant, dramatic, and engaging storylines. At the same time, we take the responsibility of deciding what is and what isn’t suitable for broadcast in the Hollyoaks time slot very seriously. This is particularly important for storylines that deal with sex (gay or straight!) as well as violence and drugs. Working this out often proves to be quite a subtle balancing act and there is an ongoing dialogue between the producers of Hollyoaks and Channel 4 to try and make sure we get it right. Please let us know how you think we’re doing..

Now the serious stuff is out the way, I thought I should let you know that we have some juicy storylines coming up to take us through the summer – late June sees Steph and Max’s wedding plans hanging by a thread and we’ll finally find out if Max gets the happy ending he deserves. Some dramatic events for Kieron and John Paul run along side this and it’s a dark and confusing time for Newt.

We know Hollyoaks is great but how could we make it even better? Is there a subject you’d like to see the show tackle? Please do keep the feedback coming in, we really do appreciate it!

Marianne x

I first became aware of the reaction to this subject when I noticed a poll on the Hollyoaks forum asking members whether they thought the way Channel 4 had handled this particular storyline had been responsible.

Around two-thirds of the posts agreed that we’d handled it well, although several viewers had also contacted the channel through viewer enquiries to say they thought it had been unrealistic. Others were concerned that portraying anorexia might result in copycat behaviour.

Most people, whether critical or not, seemed to feel it was an appropriate subject to tackle in a teenage drama. Given the recent flurry of debate about whether the fashion industry is behaving responsibly by employing size-zero models, this feels like an interesting subject to debate.

I spoke to the commissioning team at Channel 4, who had taken advice from Beat (formerly known as the Eating Disorders Association). They were very conscious of the need to avoid showing how the two anorexic characters were managing not to eat (for example there weren’t any shots of Hannah sticking her fingers down her throat in order to make herself sick), and had intended the storyline to show the dangers of anorexia – dramatised as Hannah’s poor skin, hair loss and ill-fitting, baggy clothes, together with the deterioration and eventual death of Melissa.

There was also a support line for viewers promoted after these episodes were broadcast, while information about the eating disorder was published on both Teletext and the Channel 4 health pages.

Do you have any views on the programme? How do you think anorexia should be portrayed on television? Do you think it’s helpful to deal with these sorts of issues in drama? Please let us know what you think by posting your comments below.