Neighbours: Discussion Thread

[althea-davis]

Neighbours going for Emmys would be awesome. It would get a lot of USA eyes on the program. The more people watching the better for its success and longevity.  

[AMCOLTLLover]

Sonia was great but his best pairing was definitely Dee. Even with that twin twist he had so much chemistry during 2017-2019

[Liberty City]

Dee is his true love, but I always felt like Sonya was his soulmate.

[althea-davis]

So, Neighbours won't be airing Fridays? Is that typical for this soap or is this an Amazon thing?

Edited September 22, 2023 by althea-davis

[Ben]

Ooh, complicated answer alert! Historically, Neighbours has aired 5-days a week, but in 2020, UK’s Channel 5 cut their output due to the pandemic despite Neighbours continuing production, which left us falling behind.

The contract with Fremantle was that the UK and Australia aired episodes on the same day, and the intention seemed to be that Channel 5 would catch up, but instead, they took a Christmas break and fell behind even more.

In 2021, Australia’s Network Ten reduced their output to Mon-Thurs to help the UK catch up, even retooling the season finale. By this point Channel 5 had renewed their contract with Fremantle for a year with expectation that the UK would drop to 4-days a week in 2022 in line with Australia. 

But relations between the networks had soured by this point, and Channel 5 continued with 5-days a week, gaining the world premiere and pulling ahead of Australia for the first time ever. That left Ten to air triple episodes just so they could air the series finale first. In hindsight, Channel 5 had already decided to cancel the show so had no problems burning bridges. The irony is that Channel 5 and Ten are owned by ViacomCBS, so this must have caused some interdepartmental conflict. 

It seems like Amazon have continued with this model of producing 4-episodes a week in line with what Ten want (the Friday episode was notoriously low). 

[althea-davis]

Thank you for explaining. I think Monday-Thursday is an interesting airing model. I kind of like it though I am hungry to find out what happens next lol 

[Ben]

I guess the 4-day model allows for a nice round number of episodes to be produced a year (200 per year). 

EastEnders has the same airing pattern on the BBC.

That’s what they want to hear! 

Thursday’s episode was the best of the week for me, as it felt like proper Neighbours. 

Shame Mischa Barton is still phoning it in. Hopefully she improves once she’s settled into the role and the show.

[Skylover]

Enjoying the revival so far

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[tiofmso]

Same here, really enjoying having it back. Maybe an unpopular opinion but, i’ve actually enjoyed it more last week than I have in the last decade (maybe more) of the show. There were some seriously rough years.

But they seem to have gone back to what made the show great, each family having their own unique stories going on which means it shouldn’t just be the same stuff going on every episode. (I hope that makes sense).

[tiofmso]

Very fun episode to start the week. I’m completely on board with Evil Nell. I think it’s a great idea and a character direction I never saw the show going. I can’t wait to see how it progresses.

Also something I noticed was that Neighbours was trending on twitter here in Australia this afternoon. I normally don’t think much of twitter trends, but this doesn’t happen. None of the 4 episodes last week did decent ratings (Top 20 shows) in any category. So to see the show actually being talked about by an Aussie audience is so refreshing.

[Skylover]

That's good news, I wonder if the ratings will be better in Australia this week. It's the Number 1 show on Amazon Freevee UK at the moment.

[althea-davis]

Glad it trended in Australia on Twitter and really happy it's no. 1 in the UK on Amazon Freevee. Really hope that's a good sign for the longevity of the show.

[tiofmso]

Did anyone find Nell interacting with Paul weird at all?

Not because it was badly acted or anything, just the idea of Paul and Nell having conversations just seems odd given that for her entire life on the show Nell’s been a toddler that very rarely speaks.

[Liberty City]

Good on Hugo for being a good fella and going against Nell for her deception. These recast kids are doing amazing, and it is nice seeing the "younger" cast being used for story progression. Sad seeing Harold suffer, though, and hate seeing Nell go against Terese.

Thus far, this revival feels familiar, yet brand-new at the same time. They're doing it right.

[Skylover]

Agree. They're doing so well with it.