Second Endings: Terminating Neighbours (Again)

Soppy, soapy and interminable, the Australian series Neighbours, the staple for millions of British (and Australian) watchers for years, their tonic and medication from reality, is being terminated for the second time.

In 2022, steady followers and dedicated fanatics of this program of irritating suburban geniality were met with the news that Channel 5 would be concluding its support for a series that had incubated such Australian performers and thespians as Margot Robbie, Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue. Fremantle Media, the program’s producer, had failed to secure another broadcaster in the UK as a replacement, despite the 1.5 million regular viewers that would tune in each day it was run.

Then came Amazon MGM Studios, which decided to give a blast of oxygen to the 37-year-old relic that had already passed 9,000 episodes. It took a mere four months to do so, possibly helped by the ratings for what was meant to be a farewell episode studded with stars. The streaming service Prime Video became the conduit, the new program returning as Neighbours: A New Chapter.

Salvation jobs tend to be rare in show business, and the whole industry remains inherently and manically brutal. A sure signal that Neighbours might be in trouble was the 2024 move by Amazon to cease its Freevee service, which had been responsible for broadcasting the revived variant globally.

The language being used in this latest withdrawal of support is an object study in euphemistic endings. “We are sad to announce that Neighbours will be resting from December 2025,” read an official statement on the program on February 21. But the viewers were assured that the axe, while inevitable in its deployment, would not do away with those episodes scheduled to run on the global Amazon Prime Video channel, and Australia’s Channel Ten four times a week until then. These would still have “all the big soapie twists and turns that our viewers love”.

A spokesperson for Amazon, in confirming the company’s withdrawal of support, stood by the remit in saying little on the reasons behind the decision. The language used was that of putting down a beloved pet that had endured that bit longer because of a noble intervention. “Forty years is an incredible milestone and we are proud that Amazon MGM Studios was able to have a small part of bringing further episodes to Freevee and Prime Video customers over the last two years, spanning 400 episodes.”

Things were left to Neighbour’s executive producer, Jason Herbison, to soften matters and offer a sliver of hope. First, there was the soap’s enduring popularity in the UK. There was also the show’s first Daytime Emmy nomination in 2024. “As this chapter closes, we appreciate and thank Amazon MGM Studios for all they have done for Neighbours – bringing this iconic and much-loved series to new audiences globally. We value how much the fans love Neighbours and we believe there are more stories of the residents of Ramsay Street to tell in the future.”

These stories will remain either in cold storage or floating in purgatory unless an international backer can be found. It fills barrels of irony that Australia’s longest running soap drama would need the broadcasting heft from overseas to sustain it. The Australian backer, Channel Ten, claims that funding it alone will not pass muster.

Placed in that precarious situation, the program’s success does not merely depend on a steadfast series of ratings in one market. Neighbours, with its sedate, soft treading approach to human relations in a fictional Melbourne suburb, appeals in a very specific way to British audiences. For them, this is Australia imagined as sun, pools and conviviality. Disputes irk but are eventually resolved. As the BBC press release described it in October 1986, the show “is down-to-earth, centres on ordinary families, with a particular emphasis on young people and the problems they face.”

When the wedding of Scott and Charlene, played respectively by Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue, aired in 1988, 19.7 million British viewers tuned in. This was stupendous for a production that had initially been savaged for its corniness, comical awfulness and its seeming inertia. It was also the sort of success that enraged critics for challenging the enduring supremacy of Britain’s own EastEnders and Coronation Street.

The actual city of the program’s setting is irreverent in terms of weather, teasing, toying and frustrating the visitor with lengthy spells of overcast doom, occasional spits of rain, and then, variable temperatures. The latter phenomenon drives the local resident to travel equipped with a wardrobe of clothing options: raincoat, warm jacket, short sleeved shirts. Ramsay Street, with its particular pretentious brand of sunny friendliness, should have been located in Sydney, though this remains the unmentionable heresy.

Taking the temperature of the broader public reaction to the decision, and bafflement abounds. Why would, asked one follower of the program, take away “YOUR number one show!” screeched one at Amazon. But Amazon, according to The Sun, was not happy with its broader returns. It is a global beast with global appetites, a coded way of saying that success, to be genuine, had to be an American one.

An unnamed source (of course), told the paper that Fremantle had been given “two years to see if it worked, but sadly, they just didn’t get the viewers.” Fremantle’s hunt for the cash for continued production will have to start in earnest, but short of returning to a British backer, the prospects look decidedly final for a show that has lasted well beyond its time.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

© Scoop Media