This is worse than when Michael Owen got those two late goals in the 2001 F.A Cup final. My favourite TV show of all faded to black forever ever last night and I feel like my dog died in front of me again. Other than Rap music and football, Neighbours has been the only constant in my life since 1988. What am I to do? I’m crying over Karl & Susan Kennedy and I’m feelin’ blue. Why couldn’t God have taken Eastenders or Home & Away instead?
Neighbours was famed for being the Aussie soap opera which was more popular in Britain than its homeland, and for introducing the world to Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue, Ben Mendelsohn, Alan Dale, Natalie Imbruglia, Holly Valance, Margot Robbie, Jesse Spencer, the Hemsworth brothers, and that bird who played Annalise (but not Iggy Azalea!) And every last one of them should all be thankful for Neighbours because without the show they’d probably be shearing sheep or advertising Vegemite for a living instead. But for me, Neighbours was deeper than that: Australian ex-pats who live in Britain are the W.O.A.T, but Australians in Australia are an entirely different proposition – their lifestyle is Californian, but their temperament is British, and so this weird cultural identity crisis with its own unique customs and slanguage has been best expressed in music like Bon Scott-era AC/DC and The Chats, movies like Wake In Fright and Idiot Box, and TV shows like Round The Twist and Underbelly. Neighbours was a more wholesome expression of this dicthomy, and in its teatime TV slot acted as chewing gum for my eyes and comfort food for my soul AT THE SAME DAMN TIME!
Any old prestige HBO TV show can be engaging, entertaining, and emotionally-involving for five to ten series. To be all that & a bag of Macadamia nuts five days a week for 37 years? David’s Chase and Simon could never. And that is why Neighbours was proper Transcendental Television™. It’s the end of an avvo for Paul Robinson’s neighbourhood. Pour out a little Aussie beer of your choosing for the show I loved so much I could even forgive it giving cameos to Lily Allen and Russell Brand.
How had I been watching Neighbours so long but I only just found out him who played Doug Willis is Jason Donovan’s IRL dad?
