I'd never heard of this Australian soap opera until today!  It ran for 126 episodes.  It starts with a family who wins the lottery but the show revamps itself a few times.  The storylines toward the end involve neo nazis and carnivorous plants!

Sorry if there is already a thread for this! 

From IMDB:

"A family's life changes after winning the lottery jackpot. Initially focusing on their newfound wealth, the show takes an absurd turn with neo-Nazis, Chinese gangsters, supernatural entities, and man-eating flora"

It was released on DVD a few years ago!  (PAL, Region 0)

Even this clip from episode 14 gets whacky towards the end

 

Thanks @vote4llama 

The main way I'd heard of the show was a few of the nude scenes that floated around over the years. I never knew of the show's beginnings. 

I think the show is out on DVD or was. It would be interesting to see the shift in tone - when it happened and how fast it was.

35 minutes ago, DRW50 said:

Thanks @vote4llama 

The main way I'd heard of the show was a few of the nude scenes that floated around over the years. I never knew of the show's beginnings. 

I think the show is out on DVD or was. It would be interesting to see the shift in tone - when it happened and how fast it was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chances_(TV_series)

Details the history of the show. Low ratings lead to a change in timeslot and format, with a move to more outrageous stories.

One factor that may or may not have kept it on air was that Oz TV stations were required to have a certain amount of local drama in their schedule. As mentioned in the Wiki article the Nine network had endured a number of flops and probably didn't have the budget or possible projects in the pipeline ,so Chances may have been kept on air to fulfil that quota until other projects could get off the ground.

14 minutes ago, Paul Raven said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chances_(TV_series)

Details the history of the show. Low ratings lead to a change in timeslot and format, with a move to more outrageous stories.

One factor that may or may not have kept it on air was that Oz TV stations were required to have a certain amount of local drama in their schedule. As mentioned in the Wiki article the Nine network had endured a number of flops and probably didn't have the budget or possible projects in the pipeline ,so Chances may have been kept on air to fulfil that quota until other projects could get off the ground.

Thanks. I'd read through that before, but it's been a few years.

20 hours ago, DRW50 said:

Thanks @vote4llama 

The main way I'd heard of the show was a few of the nude scenes that floated around over the years. I never knew of the show's beginnings. 

I think the show is out on DVD or was. It would be interesting to see the shift in tone - when it happened and how fast it was.

You're welcome.  I ordered the DVDs.  I'll report back if there's anything worth mentioning.  

I bought Chances a few years ago and made it fairly far (maybe into the early 110s) but didn't finish it. I found the final arc was less fun than the show was at it peak insanity (85ish-100).

The show starts off very slow. I'd say the first couple episodes are fairly unmemorable other than the lotto and the ending to the first episode. The show picks up potential a bit with some interesting additions (George Mallaby's gangster character) that doesn't really go anywhere. I think by 18-20 I found the show was finally finding its place. 

Jeremy Sims is very good as the young male lead, Alex Taylor. As the show slims down its cast and centers on him, Sims continues to maintain the energy and momentum from those earlier episodes. Sims is a good sport and ends up being the focus of a lot of the nudity (backside only) though there was a fair bit of female nudity as well. I thought the pre-reboot episodes were my favorite (18-60 I think) with some clunkers in there, but mostly an enjoyable story involving a murder and a secret from the past that blended into a couple other stories. 

Connie Reynolds, the nurse sister, was one of my favorite characters. She was the very working class put upon sister more reserved than her hot headed brothers, Dan and Jack. Her ex-husband Eddie Reynolds pops up fairly early on and adds a lot of drama. Their oldest son, Chris Reynolds, is involved in a sexual exploration story with a gay character that leads to a gay bashing and Chris' later affair with another character. It's probably a daring story for the time, but it wasn't amazing by today's standards. Another Taylor son, Ben, is a hairdresser so everyone assumes he is gay. The best queer content is from later when Alex and his business partner Angela and jack of all trades Cal end up in a situation that suggests Alex and Cal may have gone to bed together. It's never confirmed completely, but the insinuation is heavy. 

Annie Jones pops up with a very different look than I was used to. Briohey Behets pops up for a couple episodes as a doctors between seasons of filming Families. 

On occassion, I consider revisiting it because I never did finish (same with Eldorado) and I want to see if I would still enjoy that earlier part of the show as much as I did the first time. Often, the show had really interesting potential that it never capitalized on during both its traditional and its Aussie take on Twin Peaks meets Soap. That level of insanity was really hard to maintain and its last lap about a vampire with a lisp didn't really work as well for me.  

Thanks @dc11786 so much in your writeup I hadn't heard about, especially the gay elements. 

A lengthy piece on the show that I hadn't seen elsewhere. From a presentation at a convention. The photos are long gone but the writeup is still there, complete with some great quotes from Jeremy Sims. They give Sims a lot of credit for his work on the show and how he could play just about anything, which based on the glimpses I've seen, I'd tend to agree with.

I didn't realize until recently that the whole thing had originally been filmed as a pilot several years earlier and then they recast multiple roles. 

I also didn't know the woman who came up with the show was the sister of the infamous Neighbours producer Susan Bower.

https://jblum.livejournal.com/248295.html

Edited October 5, 2025Oct 5 by DRW50

Saw this thread and uploaded the entire series here:

https://archive.org/details/chances-soap-complete-series

It will take a few days for all of the files to play on IA, but they can be downloaded directly. Looking forward to your opinions on the series.

50 minutes ago, Search For Yesterday said:

Saw this thread and uploaded the entire series here:

https://archive.org/details/chances-soap-complete-series

It will take a few days for all of the files to play on IA, but they can be downloaded directly. Looking forward to your opinions on the series.

Thanks! This is incredibly kind of you.

I watched the pilot and the first few episodes of the regular show that re-used some of the pilot material. The changes were very interesting (without giving away too much of story).

The pilot is simultaneously more mature and less explicit than the first few episodes. Jeremy Sims, who was Alex, the core male role on there, called the early show "Home & Away with tits," and he's not wrong. You get real whiplash as the main soap added a grandmother character and a younger brother character for more of a family sense, yet one of the very first shots of the show is Sims' cute backside as be bounds out of bed (in the pilot the character is only ever shown from the waist up). Later in the pilot the same woman stops by his place and runs a bath for herself - he never gets in the bath with her. In the show, he again drops trou and climbs in with her. There's also a shift when some bohemian character who beds his way across the continents returns home and when one of the airport security guards says he's going to have to be strip searched, he says he wants the female guard to do it. In the pilot, she makes an annoyed face before the guys tell her she can leave the room. In the show, she looks bemused/turned on before the guys tell her she can leave the room.

Marcus Graham played Alex in the pilot. He decamped to E Street before the show was picked up. It's the same character, but he's more straightforward and fits in more as part of the "normal" family. He also doesn't play Alex's sexuality quite as heavily. Sims is much more open in Alex being a sleaze, more in line with someone from Dynasty, and the show goes along, with his good looks undercut by extremely slicked back hair (I think they improve his hair a little as he moves more into being the show's engine) and writing which more directly blames him for something bad that happens in the early episodes (in the pilot the blame is more nuanced). He no longer makes as much sense with the family, and along with some casting choices, makes them feel redundant.

The casting for his best friend/brother-in-law, a key role in the early stages, is much more generic in the show - you can believe he and Alex are old friends from wilder days in the pilot but in the show, he seems too vanilla.

The female casting is more memorable in the pilot. The mother is so good that as the pilot went along, she was the character I most connected with. The younger sister and her struggles are more compelling. The aunt is something of a Morag character, a real bitch goddess with some heart, and the actress is fascinating. All of the actresses in the main show are more generic, not bad per se, nowhere near as interesting. 

(there's another interesting change where in the pilot, when the family needs money, the mother suggests she wouldn't know how as she's been a homemaker, while in the show, the mother says she has just worked in a few shops)

The father in both is the same and does a good job with some very stock situations.

The early episodes close on a happy and surprising event which in the pilot is not as happy, because the characters are going through some terrible times when they get the news. You see that they are conflicted and also numb by the sudden change. In the episodes, the characters basically just go WOOHOO!!! so we will understand that it's meant to be good news. 

There's also a circular moment at the end of the pilot which they likely did in case someone wanted to run it as a telefilm but didn't pick up the show itself. And there's more location footage, clearly more money to go around, which adds to the viewing quality.

I can see why the network did not keep the format of the early episodes for very long. I am interested in just when and how sharply and quickly the format changes.

Edited February 27Feb 27 by DRW50

I put on the first few episodes and in all honesty, I can see why this bombed. There's really nothing remarkable about it and the theme is hilariously mismatched with the "sexy" tone they're trying to go with. It's obvious that someone pitched this like "a soap for the 90s - sexy, hot and hip" but then those are just buzzwords.

It's not exactly bad or the worst soap I've seen, just very unremarkable.

The early episodes of Chances, from what I recall, were very narrow in their focus with all the threads coming out of the lotto story. I don't think there was really enough meat to that story to carry it the way they wanted to. I liked a lot of the potential slightly later on in the first ten episodes when they introduced George Mallaby as a villain who I felt could have carried the show's plots forward and added much needed story and energy to the series, but I may not completely understand the appeal of the Aussie soaps.

I had forgoten about the ending of the original telefilm. It did feel vvery cheesy though I did appreciate the circular reference you mentioned to the bedroom window which I thought was nicely shot.

I thought Kimberly Davenport was a hard sell as the female lead in the main triangle because the writing was so harsh and Davenport seemed to play into the character's brusque nature rather than finding ways to soften her. Maybe that's more fault of the writing. Rhys Muldoon was attracted and made a nice loveable loser, but I'm not sure if he could carry the show dramatically against Jeremy Sims. I think the setup of Alex - Charlie - Ben by the time the stories really start to gel is great. I think it foolish to quickly dump Olivia Hamnett's Rhonda Scott who was a much needed level of social snobbery given that so much of the show was hinging on the fish out of water element of the Taylors moving to the affluent neighborhood.

I don't remember much of what happens at the ad agency but I remmber recognizing Sydney Jackson (the ad agency head) from his work on New Zealand soap Jackson's Wharf. I also had recognized Gary Day and Yvonne Lawley from Gloss. Patsy Stephen was fine as Angela and I seem to recall her life in those early episodes is slightly different than her later life. In the original run, she has a kid, that seems forgotten once they revamp.

I also remember thinking a lot of the setup was decent (Jack as the wealthier brother having to deal with his younger brother now having an excessive amount of money, the setup of the Geoff / Phillipa police stuff in connection with Jack running a private security company with Chris, and con man Eddie returning now that the family had money). None of it ever really popped though. A lot of the second generation Taylors were bland overall or didn't have strong enough stories.

As much as I thought the younger trashy sister Sharon was fun, I can't recall any of her story.

All I can say is, you know your show's awful when neither nudity nor the supernatural gets the viewers interested.

3 minutes ago, Khan said:

All I can say is, you know your show's awful when neither nudity nor the supernatural gets the viewers interested.

I think if they had been in that lane from the start it may have helped, but other than Passions and Dark Shadows many soaps struggle when they try this approach. Chances also went this route when Australian soaps had become much more conservative - the last successful Australian soaps to have nudity and raciness ended in the late '70s.

@dc11786 Always appreciate your insights. I'll have to look for more of these as I go through the show. I had never even heard of Jackson's Wharf. That seems to be on Tubi. Other than Shortland Street New Zealand never seemed to have a long running soap.