atrus

Hannah was meh at first but I did like her more towards the end, Chris helped. Andy was definitely GFR.

Watching the funeral today, it struck me that it was quite a performance from Peter Phelps, and how much more moving would it have been if he'd been a character we'd seen a lot more of - whether moving to the Bay or just showing up more frequently. Still, affecting scenes; and strong showings from Nicholas Cartwright and Stephanie Panozzo too. Pity the script had to suddenly make the funeral about ending their characters' relationship for absolutely no good reason other than in service of hitting the misery button on a day that really didn't require more misery. I suspect Cash will have U-turned by this time next week but I can't say I'm really bothered either way. The Summer Bay memorial felt a bit forced, with lots of 'fond' anecdotes and platitudes that sort of tailed off into nothingness. I love that Remi's abiding memory of Flick was the time she said his music was mediocre; that's certainly one sentiment that she and I can agree on. I suppose if I squinted hard enough I could perhaps see the rationale for Harper blurting out about her pregnancy at the moment she did, before Tane found himself on the wrong end of police charges - but it was highly annoying all the same. Good flipping riddance?

Ooh, could be a bit close to the bone. Someone at the network might spontaneously combust.

If I'd been kidnapped I probably wouldn't be thinking about any of those people when I got home either. But yeah, that's quite an impressive tally for her to miss.

Hello, everyone. I found myself in the rare situation of being up to date today, so thought I'd drop in and see what everyone was saying. I won't make my usual mistake of promising to keep it up! "My sister was always keen on having a 'festival of Felicity'" Yes, you can say that again. I did think it was good that we revisited Gary again today, though - one of the few elements of Flick's story that I got invested in, so credit to the writers for seeing that through. I initially thought having the funeral in their hometown was going to be the show's way of ducking out of forking out for it, but evidently they think Flick is deserving of two memorials. Well, I'm all for nice location filming, in any case. So, Abigail is permanent. I'm open to seeing where she goes, especially if she has the effect of making Levi more interesting. (She certainly can't make him less interesting!) I suppose it's a symptom of the current state of play that I'm already wondering who they'll hook her up with. Perri, perhaps? (Is she supposed to be still a teenager, or a bit older?) When was this? I'm trying to recall a time when a lot of characters died or left in quick succession - possibly there have been a few...

I prefer to think it's less of a coincidence, and more of a sneaky tribute by writers who would absolutely love to have iconic original characters back on the show, but aren't allowed and so naming new characters after them is the best they can hope for. But that's pure speculation.

Yeah, I don't remember the specific example but I don't recall language in H&A ever being bleeped or muted - usually the approach with imports (at least in the UK) has been to cut as little of the scene as necessary so that you lose the word, but probably also a couple more lines of dialogue so that it flows and that as little attention is drawn to the edit as possible. This is certainly the approach that was used by Channel 5 with Neighbours when words like 'bastard' and 'b******ks* were deployed, which seem to be more acceptable in Australia than they are pre-watershed here.

As I understand it, the word has a substantially different history and usage in the UK than it does in Australia. Even in the 90s it wasn't really acceptable at all on British TV.

Certainly that was always the case when both shows were on linear TV, but my suspicion is Home and Away actually has more viewers than Neighbours now, since the latter has gone streaming-only - although we'll never know for sure because Amazon doesn't release that info. But still, Neighbours has that perceived weight of being more of a cultural behemoth, I'd say.

Would love to see this, but the tone of the Neighbours events is very much nostalgic and celebrating the show's history, and that's not necessarily what Seven seems to want to push for Home and Away; they seem very preoccupied with it existing in the present and only the present. So I'm not sure what they'd talk about other than current experiences of being on the show. Still, that's something and I'd probably go and see it if it happened. If they did do one, I'd obviously be keen on the veterans being involved (Lynne McGranger would probably be top of that list for me, followed by Ray and Ada Nicodemou) and maybe at least one newer cast member - of the current crop I'm enjoying Dana and Mali more than anyone else, although it's slim pickings. But most of all what I'd like to hear from Home and Away as regards the current show is perspectives from the production team, to be honest, as that seems to have been very lacking in recent memory. Someone said in another thread that Lucy Addario isn't really so much on the creative direction side but more in charge of logistics, so I don't know who the figure would be currently who essentially steers the ship story- and character-wise? But that's who I'd most like to hear from (and would do my best to avoid heckling!) ETA: I think Louise Bowes is who I'm talking about, judging by the crew listings on the main site?

My memory isn't good enough to recall how often Alf, Irene etc 'stuck their bib in' with the Braxtons and co, although I'd argue they probably had more going on in their own lives and families during that era, so it didn't necessarily matter as much. But even accepting this is the case: it's still abominably slim pickings now, isn't it? In the current show, it's usually little more than platitudes exchanged between the older characters and the youngsters, and is probably driven more by the fact that they're allowed so few characters in any given episode and need to fill out the runtime than any actual desire for them to interact. Exactly. I just don't understand what the sidelining of the elders achieves. It makes the show feel so sad and empty. If the producers are resigned to keeping them on as they seem to be, they might as well make their roles meaningful and build the younger cast around them. Theo really does seem like the exception to the rule of not doing that, but then he was introduced back when Ryder was around and hence before the apparent moratorium on such relationships had come in. Yes, very much so. Worth saying too that, in the years since, as the 'elders' like Alf and Irene got older, there's a fourth age group category of the fortysomething parents that came in, most recently Maggie and Ben for example. This is another demographic that has now been entirely wiped off the board except for Leah, who's only in it because she's so longstanding, and Justin because they have proved a successful pairing. But in which case, why not just change the name, write out the legacy characters, and put all of us out of our misery - because except for the beach, they've changed everything else? I feel like if it was no longer called Home and Away and the veterans were gone, then that would be my final excuse to stop watching. And then they could board up Summer Bay House for good and do what they liked with the all the identikit adult siblings.

It should be said, though, that neither the purging of teenage characters nor the sidelining of the elder statesmen/women is likely to be accidental or incidental. Up until the Bella, Ryder etc grouping, new teen regulars had reliably been introduced every year for I don't know how long. You might be able to point at one or two exceptional years, but aside from that, probably every year since the show started. It's been a very deliberate move to change that up and to nuke the school, presumably in response to the ageing linear TV audience, and possibly focus groups. But I must say it isn't a decision that almost any H&A fan I've come across seems to be particularly keen on. Even those who staunchly defend the current show seldom argue that they're actively pleased about the wholesale homogenisation of character demographics; at best, it seems, they don't really mind either way. I'm equally convinced that the veteran characters are deliberately not being put at the centre of families or being linked in any meaningful way to newly incoming characters. I think either the showrunners or the network, or both, like the fact that they are more or less entirely segregated off into their own storylines, for whatever reason; again I suspect it plays into this idea the network has convinced itself of that it needs to play down the longevity of the show and promote it almost entirely through the lens of the twentysomethings. I'd love to be a fly on the wall of a production meeting and find out exactly what is said about this stuff, but I don't think any of it has happened by chance.

Thanks, I know perfectly well 'what those roots are', having watched the show all my life. I made it very clear further up my post that I wasn't just talking about biological parent/child relationships when calling for a need for multigenerational families - quite the contrary. Foster parents/children was the whole original point of the show, and many of Pippa and Tom's kids had lived with them very long-term, so there's no way I would ever exclude this from my definition. You say it's not shocking but I would challenge you to name a single other soap in the way the term is generally understood in Aus/UK where there is only one parent/child pair or less. The result is an utter dearth of variety in interpersonal dynamics. Irene giving adult lodgers pearls of wisdom is more welcome than the previous status quo, which saw her home offscreen for what felt like years and her relegated to a life behind the coffee machine - and I guess having lodgers again vaguely simulates a parent/child relationship. But it pales in comparison to where the show once was, as I don't think Irene is really seen as or sees herself as a parent to these characters. I agree about the bringing in of Theo being a good decision (compared to most character additions in the last three years) in terms of making a family unit with Leah and Justin. But it's a highlight among incredibly slim pickings in my view, and now he's ensconced in the band he's a shadow of his former self.

Yes, the show badly needs an injection of life. It's not rocket-science as to why the show has lost its soul and become so stale and repetitive in my opinion; bringing back families would do it. And I don't mean random pairs of sausage-factory siblings with no connection to anyone else, or bands who are 'like family'; I mean proper families that span at least two generations. Ideally they'd be related to the long-term characters so you could kill the second bird with the stone of giving Alf, Irene etc something meaningful to do. But they don't have to be - just proper families of some (any!) description, whether they be fostering set-ups to take the show back to its roots, or traditional nuclear ones. We're so far gone now that I'm not even really precious about how they achieve this. If they're really dead against bringing back teens then that's one thing, but they could have a family with young-ish adult kids who still live at home if that's preferred. Case in point: Justin's daughter Ava. Why is she not living with him full-time? It just seems to be a really obvious avenue that would give that unit more of a purpose. They could bring back VJ too. What's Tina Thomsen doing nowadays, or Matt Doran? Bring one of them back with a family of their own. Give the show a reason to exist besides interchangeable romances. Literally the only parent-child relationship in the show at the moment is Alf and Roo. Even in Home and Away's relatively small cast of 20-ish, I just find it really shocking that they think that's sustainable.

I was a fan of Peter Bensley who played Andrew - I thought he brought a lot of fun and personality to the role - but I do think the Carly relationship was a bit of a pity, as it didn't portray the character of Andrew in the best light and it's a shame, as he otherwise had a good (platonic) rapport with the pupils and that soured it a bit. I think I'm right in saying that he only reciprocated Carly's crush after she'd left school (?) but it certainly wasn't long after, and so I wasn't altogether keen on it. Definitely similar to Grant in that he was a bit more modern and trendy as teachers go and was always butting heads with Don, and I think that tension was needed/worked - but (at least as far as I recall) Grant didn't ever overstep the mark with pupils, so for my money he worked better as a character overall. (Obviously there are great characters who have overstepped the mark, like Angie Russell, but she's not supposed to be liked, so it's a very different dynamic.)

By far one of the best of the younger early-years characters, in my view. Shane is probably better remembered now as fulfilling a similar role, but I got on with Blake much better than I ever did with Shane, I think. Blake could be a bit of a rascal at times, but definitely a good kid at heart, and the show was never scared to show his sensitive, vulnerable side - such as his grief and guilt over his mother's death and then later, reliving all that in a sense with Meg. Les Hill was quite an idiosyncratic performer and often managed to bring some clever, quirky moments to otherwise run-of-the-mill scenes, which made Blake stand out more than a lot of the teens who've passed through the Bay. I was glad he ended up with Sophie down the line - not in a 'meant to be together' kind of way, particularly, but just because I cared for both characters, and they suited each other, and I thought they deserved a happy epilogue.

I quite liked Haydn, but he wasn't around long enough to really make the biggest impression - which is a shame because as Michael's son he had the potential for a lot of longevity. He definitely had a massive chip on his shoulder when he first arrived as the preppy rich kid, but the inevitable transformation into generally nice guy was perhaps a bit too fast and could have been better paced. His friendship with Blake was nice enough, and they appeared to be setting up Haydn and Sophie as a bit of a supercouple but then it totally fizzled out when Pippa and Michael married and they ended up living together. Which felt awfully unfair on Karen, because she had liked Haydn and he'd treated her poorly and eventually chosen Sophie over her, only for the second relationship to go nowhere - which left Karen feeling like dirt and arguably led to the chain of events that culminated in her downfall. I don't know what the behind-the-scenes story was, if there was one, but I wondered whether Haydn and Karen were both supposed to be in the show for much longer than they were. Their replacement in that group by Simon and Finlay felt pretty seamless, and Haydn and Simon in particular felt quite similar in some ways.

Thanks to everyone who was involved in organising, compiling and writing up the poll - I really enjoyed reading all the rankings and commentary, which took up a good chunk of a long train ride the other day! Wish I'd voted in it too now, but I didn't realise it was going on until I saw the results. I fully understand that current characters are bound to perform miles better than past ones in a poll like this - and that it would hardly be reasonable to do a poll only of viewers who have an encyclopaedic knowledge of characters dating right back to 1988, or yield very many entries if you did. But even so, I must admit I was pretty gobsmacked to see Cash, Felicity and Tane all placing in the top ten. They're not even in my top ten in the current show, never mind out of 35 years. No slight on the actors at all, but I don't think any of the three are very remarkable character-wise. Someone said upthread that at least it shows people are enjoying the current character roster which is probably true - but personally as someone who's really crying out for changes to the formula at the moment, I'm not entirely decided on whether that in itself is a good thing or not. Still, it's certainly good to see that all the current old-schoolers safely rank within the top 20. Pippa and Don surely ought to be there too, though - and quite striking that the only characters apart from Sally who made the grade and aren't either current or very recently departed are Braxtons!

Did I miss something about why Alf had it in for Cash so much early in the episode? I know Cash is annoying but it's unlike Alf to bawl him out like that when he's just doing his job. I was holding out for a "flamin' cops!" but alas. Rolled my eyes a bit at Roo's, "Are you trying to make up for what you did in the past?" as if it hadn't been glaringly obvious from the first 20 minutes of the episode that this was Marilyn's reason for helping out at the food bank. My initial reaction was to think Maz is concentrating her efforts in the wrong place - but actually, maybe she isn't? Maybe if Heather is getting the help she needs from medical professionals then Maz's efforts are better spent helping others; the way Heather is right now I'm not particularly convinced that Maz is going to be a positive presence in her life, although I still think/hope that further down the line we might see them reconcile. Meanwhile, at Band Camp... I was pretty much on Team Theo over Kirby meeting with Bob; it wasn't that he was forbidding it, just wanted her to be honest about it. Guessing the next stage is Bob being annoyed at getting cancelled on and then rocking up in Summer Bay. Joy.

I think Digital Spy is just paraphrasing the original source article from the People/Mirror, like every other article has done today - it's just that the way they've worded it makes it come across a little stronger. The allegation is clear, i think - that Viacom don't want to pay any more money, rather than that they have anything against Neighbours per se - although whether that's a fair representation of the facts is another matter entirely. My take on this is that Viacom won't care about home-grown content on C5 any more than they'll care about Neighbours as a cultural institution; they'll simply want what works best in terms of revenue minus expediture. If Fremantle is trying to put up the price, that might not be Neighbours. Let's remember though that negotiations of this nature happen all the time, and only infrequently do the details leak into the press. It makes commercial sense for both parties to retain a degree of intransigence in the early part of negotiations, and that may be all that we're seeing here. For equally commercial reasons, I wouldn't expect either firm to comment on the situation until all options are exhausted, so the silence from C5 and Fremantle doesn't particularly surprise or concern me. All this doesn't necessarily have any bearing on Home & Away, except to say it indicates that decision-making at C5 is now subject to higher powers who, being once removed, may not be nearly as concerned about the overall calibre of their output as the domestic network is, provided it's making money. Even so, the channel is getting H&A for a hell of a lot cheaper than it gets Neighbours, so for the time being it's not likely to be much of an issue, especially given the whole-life deal.

Harpo. Excellent stuff.

Presumably same-day broadcasts will be a long-term goal for C5, since there's absolutely no benefit to them to be seven weeks behind. Guessing that contractual reasons are holding that back at present, but it will come - and possibly this is the first sign of it. I'd say it's quite feasible that by 2018 the two nations will be broadcasting H&A in tandem.