Does H&A need an overhaul at the moment?

[Homeandawayfan.]

9 hours ago, James Martin said:

I mean if you wanted to do a complete reset, you'd need to do something very bold; like drop a plane on Summer Bay.  That's how it happened in Emmerdale; Phil Redmond quickly worked out there's no major road or train line nearby which are available options if you need a big stunt in an urban soap.  Summer Bay doesn't have those.  You could potentially have a tsunami but the option to film that convincingly just isn't there.

Like Emmerdale, Home & Away also has a very widespread geography compared to the tight setup of Corrie, EastEnders and Neighbours.  It's ideal if you want to blow up random bits, revamp some sets and do a cast clear out.

Also 1993 saw the exit of the original Emmerdale farmhouse and Demdyke Row, 2 major long standing locations, plus we had the plane crash and the exit of Annie and Joe in 1994. And the arrival of the Dingles and Glovers. In real life the new owners of the property that dubbed as "Emmerdale Farm" got shirty about a pay dispute so in the end they backed out and would not allow filming there unless they got a certain amount of money. I feel if the original farm had stayed, the change 1993-1994 would not have felt so drastic, as some of it was beyond Yorkshire TV's control.

Neighbours also had a similar revamp at the same time, as it also faced the axe like Emmerdale but an agreement was reached, but 1993-1994 saw the exit of the iconic Waterhole, and the exit of Jim, Julie and Paul and the arrivals of the Kennedy's and Starks, and Rebecchi's in 1995.

H&A has managed to keep its key set, Summer Bay House, since the pilot.

 

 

[James Martin]

It's worth noting that Home & Away did similar in 2000.  The Stewart house was destroyed in the Olympic Mudslide and we lost the original Diner before going through a succession of Diners during the 2000's.

It is, incidentally, 20 years next week since the Sarah Lewis Olympic Siege (it wouldn't air until Easter 2005 in the UK.) I might do a thread on that.

 

[Homeandawayfan.]

And Corrie went through such a revamp in 1983-1986. Exits of several original characters (Annie, Elsie, Albert) and iconic ones (Stan, Len, Eddie, Fred, Billy), and the Rovers revamp after the 1986 fire, and the conversion of Alf's corner shop into a mini market in 1985, getting rid of the original look of the shop that had been there since the show began.

Also 2000 saw Ailsa leave in H&A and the Sutherland arrival.

 

[nenehcherry2]

16 hours ago, James Martin said:

I mean if you wanted to do a complete reset, you'd need to do something very bold; like drop a plane on Summer Bay.  That's how it happened in Emmerdale; Phil Redmond quickly worked out there's no major road or train line nearby which are available options if you need a big stunt in an urban soap.  Summer Bay doesn't have those.  You could potentially have a tsunami but the option to film that convincingly just isn't there.

Like Emmerdale, Home & Away also has a very widespread geography compared to the tight setup of Corrie, EastEnders and Neighbours.  It's ideal if you want to blow up random bits, revamp some sets and do a cast clear out.

I've always said this about H&A and Emmerdale's analogy; being rural and being set over entire settlements (as opposed to a street, square, close or collection of such, as in the others).

[Homeandawayfan.]

I think apart from their locations and being set in entire settlements, after that, the 2 soaps go their separate ways. I feel Emmerdale is more like Neighbours in terms of format, characters and community spirit.

Take The High Road was another soap set in an entire area like ED and H&A though.

[James Martin]

There's another interesting quirk of both shows; geography.

Something Phil Redmond also recalls when he came into Emmerdale is apart from the locations filmed in what was then Esholt and now part of their purpose built outdoor set, nobody really understood the exact geography of Beckindale (as was.)

How long does it take to get from the Woolpack to Home Farm?  Where, indeed, is The Malt Shovel in relation to everything?  Could I walk to the Woolpack from the Dingles' house, or do I need an Uber?

Likewise in H&A, how long does it take to get from the Caravan Park to the Surf Club?  Can I walk from the Diner to Irene's?  In 2004 we know you needed to drive from The Palace to Leah's. There doesn't feel like that established sense of geography.

That's before you ask in Emmerdale's case, "how long does it take to get to Hotten, or Leeds or Bradford?" In the Bay, I've no idea how far out Yabbie Creek is, let alone "the city" which I assume is Sydney?  We assume Summer Bay is actually in New South Wales?

[Red Ranger 1]

Emmerdale's got a bit more fixed since the purpose-built set was built, so at least we know where everything in the village is in relation to each other. Home and Away is possibly the one soap where you could never come up with an accurate map of everything (although, as with early Emmerdale, people have tried!). Mind you, I think the fact that we know what Ramsay Street looks like disguises the fact that Neighbours has a similar problem: No-one really has a clue where Lassiters or Erinsborough High are in relation to it. (Not to mention that people often act as though those six "hero" houses are the whole of Ramsay Street, even though there's evidence to the contrary!)

[Homeandawayfan.]

Even EastEnders Walford has seemingly moved around the East End, and as it is filmed in Borehamwood, a town just outside London but within the M25, scenes on the roof of the Vic give that game away that it is not in London at all, and the surrounding streets just do not look like inner city London and and you can see fields in the background, not lots of towerblocks, office blocks, urban churches or highways etc and bulky blocks of flats. Over the years Walford has been hinted as being near Walthamstow, then Stepney and even as far east as West Ham before being more fixed at Bromley by Bow.

I agree Emmerdale has become more fixed since the Harewood set but Neighbours and H&A still do have geography problems, H&A the most. Yabbie creek was once said to be a good hour or two bus ride away but now it seems just a 5 minute drive.

[nenehcherry2]

10 hours ago, James Martin said:

There's another interesting quirk of both shows; geography.

Something Phil Redmond also recalls when he came into Emmerdale is apart from the locations filmed in what was then Esholt and now part of their purpose built outdoor set, nobody really understood the exact geography of Beckindale (as was.)

How long does it take to get from the Woolpack to Home Farm?  Where, indeed, is The Malt Shovel in relation to everything?  Could I walk to the Woolpack from the Dingles' house, or do I need an Uber?

Likewise in H&A, how long does it take to get from the Caravan Park to the Surf Club?  Can I walk from the Diner to Irene's?  In 2004 we know you needed to drive from The Palace to Leah's. There doesn't feel like that established sense of geography.

That's before you ask in Emmerdale's case, "how long does it take to get to Hotten, or Leeds or Bradford?" In the Bay, I've no idea how far out Yabbie Creek is, let alone "the city" which I assume is Sydney?  We assume Summer Bay is actually in New South Wales?

That was exactly my point RE being rural and set over entire settlements ("villages" by UK definition). This also allowed some fluidity with locations / characters' homes and, to your very point, some ambiguity with the distances between locations; the characters in both ED and H&A were not neighbours but were co-residents in the same communities. Whilst those over-the-fence, neighbourly disputes drove a lot of the stories, comedy ones especially, in the other soaps (e.g. Max Vs Ron in Brookside, the early Battersbies Vs everyone else in Corrie, Madge Vs Mrs Mangel and so on), this wasn't a factor as such in H&A or ED (and still isn't). 

Without a core street or adjacent houses for neighbours to bicker around, Emmerdale and Home and Away always relied upon those "centre of community" sets (the Diner, Woolpack, School, Kathy's Diner etc) as well as the external backdrops of beaches, farms or dales for this "glue" even more so than the others relied on their pubs, corner shops, factories or car lots. 

Whereas, in the soaps that are set in streets / adjacent streets, the houses almost became characters in themselves, there was less need to introduce new homes and having the continuous, consistent street setting allowed for the formula of entire new families arriving en masse into a pre-existing vacant house (less so in EastEnders perhaps since so many of the houses were divided into flats). Whereas H&A didn't have (or need, given the fostering theme) such fixed houses to allow for this formula (especially in its earlier days before SBH and the Beach House became iconic), hence it's been "lost" since the fostering format was removed. 

Pre-mid naughties (since I've seen very little of the show since), the only families to arrive into the Bay en masse were Michael/Haydn (into a caravan), the Bowmans (into Don's pre-existing house), the Nashes (who had a link to an established character and moved into a never-seen-before home) and, ultimately, the Sutherlands (who moved into the show's most iconic house, so the first time H&A truly matched the arrival story formula of the other shows, as I've described above). 

Edited August 10 by nenehcherry2

[stevester55]

On 09/08/2024 at 02:44, James Martin said:

I mean if you wanted to do a complete reset, you'd need to do something very bold; like drop a plane on Summer Bay.  That's how it happened in Emmerdale; Phil Redmond quickly worked out there's no major road or train line nearby which are available options if you need a big stunt in an urban soap.  Summer Bay doesn't have those.  You could potentially have a tsunami but the option to film that convincingly just isn't there.

Like Emmerdale, Home & Away also has a very widespread geography compared to the tight setup of Corrie, EastEnders and Neighbours.  It's ideal if you want to blow up random bits, revamp some sets and do a cast clear out.

A shark storyline would be good .it was done in the early days when Rory got killed...it may be a repeat storyline but done over thirty years ago lol