cymbaline

Jack wasn't the most likeable of the teens but I would never describe him as unmemorable. I'd forgotten about Selina but I would rate her above the early twentysomethings.

Even still, it was the teens who were given more interesting things to do. Nick was mostly one leg of that tiresome triangle with Lucinda and Ryan. Then Shane came along and we all know where that went. I'm pretty sure if you asked people to name characters from the early years of Home and Away, Nick and Matt and Rob and Luke won't be the first ones they think of. Were they really bigger stars than Bobby, Sophie, Blake, Shane, Angel, Jack or Shannon?

The actors the producers didn't want to lose were the younger ones. It was the teens who became the show's breakout stars, not the ones who were a bit older. It's telling that Matt, Nick and Rob all left without a goodbye scene. Finlay wasn't one of the stronger teens and my guess is that most people remember her these days for her outfits.

That 2005 return is sooo Home and Away. They go to the trouble of bringing back an old character and then trash them or turn them into a psycho. Flawed and all as 1988 Brett was, I can't see him wanting to kill his own child.

Does anybody have a favourite Mike Perjanik underscore? There's a playlist of them on Youtube. Bobby's Theme is probably my favourite. The comedy ones on the other hand...let's just say they haven't aged well.

I wonder what the pay is like now? Are the older actors, in particular, still laughing all the way to the bank? They don't get much to do most of the time either.

None of those big name hires went too well, did they? Craig McLachlan didn't hang around for too long either. Even at that, his tenure was broken up by him trying to launch a music career. Richard Norton, also poached from Neighbours, turned out to be a damp squib as well. Neither Viv nor Emma are particularly memorable characters. It's hard to know if they'd have done better if they'd been introduced at a different time.

Yes that makes sense. If you think about it, Michael is a character we learned very little about. They gave him enough backstory to get him going (i.e. the divorce, the kids, the failed business) and then there was little more. Did he ever mention his parents or any siblings, for example? I wonder too if there were ever plans to bring in Kate, his estranged daughter? The writers seemed to forget about her once Michael resumed his relationship with Pippa. I've never been able to believe that the two Pippas are the same person. Even if I sort of managed that, I couldn't see VanPip being with Michael, nor DebPip with Roger. Both actors worked well with their version of Pippa so that was a job well done. Recently, I stumbled across a podcast that Debra and Dennis did with Cameron and Daddo last year https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/does-keeping-the-romance-alive-matter-debra-lawrence/id1463023422?i=1000653111872 Dennis was quick-witted and funny on it. It's a real shame that that side of him never really manifested itself on Home and Away.

Debra Lawrance has been pretty open about how good the pay on Home and Away was. I've heard her describe getting the job as "winning the lottery" and that Pippa "paid for the real estate". If you take those comments at face value, it looks like she and Dennis (presumably) benefitted from the better pay rates.

I liked Michael and was sorry to see him go. Having said that, I have no strong feelings about whether killing him off was the right or wrong decision. If you look at Michael when he first came along and Michael by the end, he's a very different character. He was more likeable and funny at the beginning. Perhaps he was written as a sort of romantic lead so that Pippa and the audience would take to him. Once Haydn left, he began to lose his purpose and never really got it back. By the time they wrote him out, he wasn't as important a character as he once was. Life went on in the caravan park and then, Pippa moved on. When you look at the timescale now, killing him off was a bit pointless. Debra/Pippa decided to leave the year after and they created a new love interest to send her on her way. Dennis not being there probably made it easier for Debra to quit, but I think they would've moved back to Melbourne sooner rather than later. My theory is that their hand was forced re. the creation of Michael. They would've got away with having one foster parent in the Fletcher's if Vanessa had stayed around. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall in the production office when she handed in her notice! Losing both foster parents and expecting audiences to believe Debra was the same person as Vanessa was quite a stretch. They needed to steady the ship after losing two of the most important characters on H&A in such quick succession. They felt they needed to have two parents back in the caravan park house, restoring the status quo. It certainly would explain why they had Pippa 2 marrying Michael exactly a year after Tom died. Would they have left the door open to his return? Who knows. It seems to be a tactic that rarely works. Bobby Ewing's return to Dallas is the most high-profile example of that going wrong. Dirty Den's return to EastEnders doesn't seem to have been a success, though, of course, that's now clouded by Leslie Grantham's webcam antics. Bobby came back through Ailsa's fridge, so perhaps they gave some consideration to which household appliance Michael could manifest himself through. It'd have to be Pippa's oven.

I would rather have seen Chris Hale being given a more prominent role in the 90's, rather than Nick. He was far more believable as a policeman than Nick ever was, and he wasn't too hard on the eyes either. That isn't to say that Bruce Roberts wasn't likeable or good at what he was given. Equally, he could just have easily been a teacher or a mechanic or whatever other jobs were going around in those years. Maybe I found him less policeman-like because he was the first police officer to become a main character. We saw more of him off-duty than we did with his uniform on. Like Dee Smart's Lucinda, they under-used Nick and saddled him with that dreadful love triangle. He was more interesting before and after Lucinda. His relationship with Shane was a highlight of his time on the show and it's a pity that Bruce left when he did. It might have partially stopped Shangel cannibalizing the show for the next couple of years.

This is the article which mentions it. I had the details slightly wrong - no mention of Frank in it. I have my doubts about some of the finer details in this. The article refers to "...the time the Bobbys (Nicolle Dickson) and the Roos (Justine Clarke) were leaving" but that makes no sense. There's a gap of almost 4 years between Justine and Nicolle leaving. By the time Nicolle called it quits, the show was in a very different place to where it had been in the first couple of years. While Bobby being killed off was a significant event, it wasn't seismic. That's probably why I misremembered the story and named Frank instead. I'm inclined to think that if this actually happened, it was in the Frank & Roo/Frank & Bobby era rather than in 1993. https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/eddie-mcguire-rove-mcmanus-top-tvs-rich-list/news-story/39aaa1c5e52cd51b612dc6e6b9cbe3a0

I have some older relatives who used to watch Corrie religiously and rarely missed an episode. A couple of them have given up watching altogether. Another one is just tuning in out of habit but says it's not very good these days. Maybe Corrie's producers don't want 70somethings watching any more but if they do, they're doing something wrong. Trying to churn out 4-6 episodes a week with a large cast is quite the undertaking and I can't see it being sustainable. Home and Away's tighter ship looks like it's standing them in good stead. The golden age of soaps is long gone and none of them will ever get the audiences they once had. Corrie could do worse than to return to its roots and become a smaller, better-written character-based drama. Already this year, Neighbours has been canned (again), and the BBC has axed River City. Perhaps having Stefan Dennis on the books is a bad luck thing. I can see other smaller soaps being cancelled over the coming years. I don't care for modern-day Home and Away but the producers are obviously doing something right. It's the ultimate shape-shifting soap which isn't tied to a formula as such. Maybe that's what keeps it relevant to its audience.

The relationship between Carly and Andrew seems creepier to me now than it did then. Perhaps it's because the 80's was a simpler time. All that saved it from being really icky was Andrew's oddly childlike way of behaving. I don't know who Carly was best suited to, but she deserved better than the awful Ben. It's a nailed-on certainly that Ben and Tom would have butted heads if the two men found themselves living under the same roof. In that case, I would have been 100% on "Team Tom".

Perhaps nobody ever saw the Macklins as being a long-term thing. Sandie Lillingston was in nearly 140 episodes (1988-89) and was given plenty to do, yet she was never added to the opening credits. Rewatching years later, there's more to Brett than I had originally remembered. The scenes after Martha was born showed a different side to him. It's a pity they didn't keep him around because he had the ingredients to be more than just a bratty rich kid. I believe they brought him back briefly years later and in typical H&A fashion, trashed his character.