For 37 years, Melbourne has had an extra suburb.
Welcome to Erinsborough.
It's been the site of murder, amnesia, arson, sordid love affairs, unexpected family reunions, drownings and disastrous car crashes.
Only none of it has been real.
The fictional neighbourhood is home to Ramsay Street, an idyllic cul-de-sac set somewhere in Melbourne's east.
It's housed beloved characters and launched the international careers of some of Australia's biggest names.
Over the years, it's evolved — reluctantly at first — from a street of all-white residents into a diverse neighbourhood.
Most of all, it's kept a lot of people in a notoriously boom-and-bust industry in work for a long time.
And now, after nearly 9,000 episodes, 63 weddings, 20 births and 68 deaths, Australian soap opera Neighbours is coming to an end.
A burst of sunshine
Neighbours creator Reg Watson learned his trade on British soaps.
"It was a brilliant concept," says Anne Charleston, who played Madge Bishop.
"And he had the age range from children through to grandparents. So there was something, somebody there for every member of the audience."
"He kept it simple," says Ian Smith, who played Madge's husband and neighbourhood fuddy-duddy Harold Bishop.
The influence of the UK's long tradition of soap operas on the Neighbours canon is clear — a large cast, dramatic storylines and simple suburban sets are the foundation of the show.
"[Reg] understood that audience, he understood that kind of storytelling, and understood how to make that sort of drama, that fast turnaround," former scriptwriter and editor Philippa Burne says.
Watson's idea for a show was knocked back by Channel 9 in 1982, but picked up by Channel 7 as Neighbours in 1984. It was then axed a year later, and picked up by Channel 10.
It was a rocky start for the revamped show.
"Ratings weren't flash," TV historian Andrew Mercado says.
The publicity team worked flat-out to promote the show, taking the cast to shopping centres and, according to Mercado, "basically begging people to watch the show".
"And it worked," he says.
The addition of then-unknown actors Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan in 1986 helped power the juggernaut.
This year, Minogue said she would be "forever grateful" for her time on Neighbours.
"We had no idea how big the show would become and how passionately viewers would take it to heart," she said.
None felt that passion more than British fans.
In October 1986, the show was bought by the BBC. It was first screened at 1:30pm, but soon made its way to a higher-rating timeslot with a repeat screening at 5:35pm.
"And boom," Mercado says.
It was a bleak time in Thatcher-era Britain. The year prior, 1987, started with a cold wave so chilly parts of the sea froze over, then was marked by the deadly sinking of a ferry, the Hungerford massacre, an extratropical cyclone, the Remembrance Day Bombing and the King's Cross Fire.
"This happy-go-lucky Australian show with people who live in beautiful houses with huge backyards and all this space to go outside and play cricket in the street all year round."
Since moving to Channel 10, this suburban Australian dream has been filmed on a studio lot in Nunawading in Melbourne's outer east. The outsides of the houses you see on Ramsay Street are real — they're just on Pin Oak Court in Vermont South, a short drive away.
Ian Smith reflects that it was everything English people thought Australia was — living next door to your doctor, calling him by his first name.
"And a pool in your backyard?" he adds.
The show's most famous episode – Scott and Charlene's wedding – had 2 million viewers in Australia when it aired in 1987.
In the UK, about 20 million people tuned in.
A month later, Minogue released her first single.
By 1989, Neighbours was pulling 20 million viewers every single day in the UK — a third of the population.
Its young cast became superstars. There was even a Neighbours video game.
It has since been exported to more than 60 countries around the world and the format has been reproduced in other languages.
It was appointment viewing. Current cast member Takaya Honda remembers family evenings built around dinner and Neighbours on the TV. It was, as he says, "a thing".
"It's bizarre to think about Neighbours going for as long as it has, because when you break it down, the premise of the show is a dead-end street," Mercado says.
But the Neighbours writers' room has pumped out five episodes per week for the better part of four decades, and that has delivered more drama than any suburban street should ever have to deal with.
Like when Dione "Dee" Bliss died after a car driven by her new husband went off a cliff on their wedding day.
When the show decided to renovate its back lot in 2004, it turned it into one of the soap's biggest moments — the arson of a popular Erinsborough pub.
"[It was a] huge day in the writing room, when they came in and said 'you can burn down Lassiter's'," Burne says.
"Like, oh my God it's like a gift."
It's one of the many storylines brought about by off-set circumstances.
Sometimes, if the show is running under time, writers are given characters, a set and just minutes to come up with what's known as a "filler scene".
And if you've ever wondered why characters choose to break up or have very private conversations at somewhere like the pub? It's because that's the set that was available.
"I was involved with the Neighbours plane crash," former scriptwriter and editor Peter Mattessi says.
"Basically we had a situation, we had too many cast and so we need to kill some off …
"Let's do a plane crash!"
The infamous 2005 storyline ended with a plane submerged in Bass Strait. In reality, the actors were splashing around in the pool from the set of 1990s game show Man O Man.
It's a reflection of the fact doing big scenes on a soap opera budget isn't easy.
Anne Charleston remembers the day Harold drowned at sea in 1991.
"I mean, that was sad because it was supposed to be a roaring, waving, sea, and it was like millpond," she says.
"They were throwing rocks in there to make it look as if it was rough," Smith replies.
Of course, it wouldn't be a soap opera if the plotline that engineered his return to the show years later didn't involve amnesia.
There was also the time Bouncer the dog inexplicably had a dream he was marrying the pooch next door.
And, true to the genre, there have been so many weddings.
Burne says she still sometimes feels guilty about killing off beloved Madge in 2001.
Charleston says the death of her character was "a mutual arrangement".
"They wanted rid of me. And I wanted rid of them," she says.
But she still remembers it being "really difficult" to say goodbye.
Neighbours University
Shane Isheev, who has been writing for the show since 2015, says he's "known to be a lover of the more heightened, crazy stuff that we do on the show".
Isheev started off as a junior writer and now holds the demanding role of script producer.
Even the current executive producer, Jason Herbison, worked his way up through the ranks.
His entry point to the show was off the back of a letter he wrote to the show when he was in Year 11, saying "this is what I think is wrong with the show".
He returned home from school one day to a phone call from a Neighbours producer who told Herbison he had some good ideas and there might be a job for him when he finished school.
"And I looked to the people that were older than me, to train me, and that spirit is very much alive today."
The Neighbours machine is powered by writers, producers, editors, sound technicians, camera operators, hair and makeup artists, caterers and many more roles.
"We produce two and a half hours of television in a week. And we do it, you know, for 48 weeks of the year," actor Ryan Moloney says.
Moloney has played Jarrod "Toadfish" Rebecchi since 1993 — for more than half his life.
"I think the level of ability, and what we bring to the table is far beyond what most people really know or understand," he says.
At any one time, there are usually at least two crews shooting different scenes and production in train for all different stages of an episode.
Only one original cast member is still on the show — Stefan Dennis, who plays neighbourhood villain Paul Robinson.
Many who have left Ramsay Street have been launched into international stardom. Margot Robbie, Guy Pearce, all three Hemsworth brothers, Russell Crowe, Natalie Imbruglia and Ben Mendelsohn all appeared on the show.
"You just learn an incredible discipline and you can work really, really fast. You're just really conscious of everybody else's jobs," Robbie said in 2020.
Representing Australia
The list of the show's most famous exports has a notable feature — the biggest stars in the early years were white.
"It didn't reflect really any version of Australia at that time in terms of diversity," scriptwriter Peter Mattessi says.
Charleston sums it up: "It was vanilla."
A groundswell of criticism about on-screen representation first came from the UK, where media is generally more diverse.
As current executive producer, Herbison concedes the criticism of the early years is fair.
He is keen to highlight the progress made over the last decade, and the diversity of the current cast and crew.
But that change didn't happen easily or quickly.
The first Asian family was introduced to the show in 1993. Their short-lived appearance involved a storyline in which the Lims were accused of barbecuing a pet dog after it disappeared.
Nearly two decades later, the first South Asian family was introduced in 2011. The Kapoors were broadly celebrated in the UK but received vicious online backlash in Australia.
The family was written out by 2013, with one character dying and the other two "going back to India" — despite the family being from Melbourne.
"You can't just parachute in an Indian-Australian family or a Chinese-Australian family and go 'cool, we're diverse now'. That is a process that begins with who is telling your stories," Mattessi says.
That meant more of an effort to bring people from a range of backgrounds into the writers' room.
A cast more reflective of real life in suburban Melbourne has followed.
But last year, a growing number of actors came forward to say they faced racism on set, alleging management turned a blind eye.
The allegations saw the media union intervene and insist on mandatory anti-racism, sexual harassment and discrimination training for all staff.
At the time, the former race discrimination commissioner said the response showed Australia still had a long way to go when it came to dealing with allegations of racism.
Takaya Honda joined Neighbours in 2016 in the role of doctor David Tanaka – whose gay wedding was the first on Australian television following the legalisation of same-sex marriage.
Honda says he would not still be on the show if he had experienced or seen racism on set.
One of his favourite things about playing David is that he has Asian heritage and is gay, but those parts of his life are not his defining features.
He says the cultural impact of the show has been "massive".
He says he hears from fans who tell him the storylines have helped them come out as gay, or empowered them to live more proudly. A plot point about his character needing a kidney transplant resonated with viewers who experienced the same thing.
Actress Rebekah Elmaloglou says the trials experienced by her character Terese Willis, including alcoholism and breast cancer, also resonated with viewers.
"It's always been on TV somewhere in the background.
"And I think it's relatable."
A blueprint until the end
The soap's status as a constant was challenged in March 2020 when the pandemic hit and production had to shut down.
Filming resumed about a month later with a very different environment — there was no kissing or holding hands, the cast and crew were siloed into different groups, and camera magic made physically distant actors look more intimate.
It was one of the first productions in the entire world to return to filming.
"And suddenly the phone began to ring and ring and the New York Times, were on the phone and productions all over the world wanted to talk to us," Herbison says.
Their model became a blueprint for other shows.
While Neighbours survived COVID, it has now reached its final days.
Ratings have been steadily declining in Australia for years now, and in 2011 the show was punted to 10's secondary channel 10 Peach.
Its steady UK viewership has kept it afloat and more than a million people still tune in to Channel 5 to watch Neighbours every night.
But the British network has pulled the pin, saying it instead wants to spend more money on UK productions.
The final episode will air in August. Filming will wrap up even sooner.
Ryan Moloney says it's been an incredibly sad time.
The about 200 people employed by the show have been polishing their resumes and updating their headshots as the soap draws to a close, leaving an already unstable industry with one fewer source of reliable work.
Some of the show's biggest names have been brought back to Melbourne to film scenes for the finale, including Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue reprising their iconic roles of Scott and Charlene.
Mattessi hopes even after the cameras stop rolling, it won't be an end to life in Erinsborough.
"Karl and Susan are still going to be there," he says.
"Toadie is going to still be popping in for a cup of tea here to talk about his problems.
Credits:
- Reporting: Margaret Paul, Ben Knight and Mawunyo Gbogbo
- Additional reporting and digital production: Yara Murray-Atfield
- Digital editor: Kate Higgins
- Video production: Mandy Williams and Melanie Counsell
- Additional photography: Danielle Bonica
- With thanks to Network 10 and Fremantle Media
