James Martin

Although Sarah Lewis was A LOT by the standards of 20 years ago, Dan Bennett was the real turning point, and of course 2004 into 2005 wasn't a cliffhanger, Bevan Lee ended 2004 everything resolved and tied up (Ric was on the run still but that was it) so 2005 was literally Day One. But it came back a very different show, and you had Zoe the Stalker from the get go plus Robbie's AIDS scare etc. By 2006 it was full-on Cop Drama. Jack Holden has to be the most bent cop in Soapland.

Emmerdale started at November 1989 in early 2019 and took just 11 months to get to the plane crash. I'm not sure the classic episodes now are at the point where they could be considered all that "classic." I enjoyed watching from the plane crash up to Kim's 1999 exit, but nothing really appealed beyond that. The Tates vs. the Dingles and then the Sugdens. During the Summers of 1997 and 1998, Yorkshire Television also tried to coattail on the success of Home & Away by bringing in the Holiday Village. If there's one era of Home & Away I would like to watch again it's from the back end of the Dan Bennett era - around the time the helicopter crash had been resolved - up to Sally's departure. That era had a really strong teen group of Matilda, Lucas, Ric, Belle, Cassie, Geoff, Annie and you also had the semi-regular Lisa who died in the car crash. You also had Fisher's return in there, Brad & Sally, Kim's exit, Beth's death, Kit back for a bit. Then you get to 2008 and the excellent Bevan Lee era, and the 20th is a catalyst to bring old characters back (Debra comes back for Sally's re-stabbing and then for her exit.) There's odds and sods left on YouTube in questionable quality, but that era was filmed in HD so won't have aged badly. Late 2006 to Mid 2008 was for me the show's last great era. I would love to see that again.

Yep. The only way that the regions would have a full set of credits to play at teatime was if lunchtime had a full set of credits. For the same reason, I can't see how the credit cut would be regionally phased. If Carlton were playing it out without credits (Carlton hired LWT's playout facilities midweek after 1993, and eventually all network programmes were routed through the South Bank) then that's how other regions would have picked it up. There's also the other elephant in the room that even if regions were privately line-fed a copy with credits, that would have complicated things massively because whilst the regions all did their own thing after Home & Away, they all still had to get to CITV on time.

As I said a year go, my memory is they were phased in. That said, the credits would get cut if ITV needed to edit in a longer recap (normally when the previous day's evening showing had to be shifted or dropped entirely.) It's also very unlikely the credits would only appear at teatime due to the workflow in the regions, that is the evening showing was always played out locally, not from London. The regions acquired their copy by taping the show as the lunchtime showing was fed to them from London. So if the lunchtime showing had no credits, it would be impossible for the evening showing to do so as they'd recorded it with no credits at lunchtime.

Sarah Lewis is the big one, also the Believers thing although that was just a bit bats**t. Dale's cot death wasn't dark but by God it hit you like a train at the time. It's just one of those storylines you really can't have any build-up to, it just happens and throws everything out of the window. I think that's why it was such a good piece of drama, because that's how that stuff happens for real. And our paper (The Times) never did synposes of episodes so I didn't even know it was coming. I do recall ITV doing one of those helpline slides off the back of the credits, which started to be done fairly often for the British soaps by the 90's (and still is) but rarely done on an import. Channel 5 ran some in the 2000's for stuff, notably Kane's Cancer storyline ISTR.

Generally it was for content, but occasionally also done for time as well. But yes, editing did step up significantly in the Carlton era. I think there were also more regions putting the show out at 5:10pm after 1993 as a lot of regions, especially the new entrants, pivoted to having hour-long regional news magazines between 6pm and 7pm. Before then, 6pm or even 6:30pm was used quite heavily. Most regions were on 5:10pm by the time the enitre network settled on 5pm in March 1999.

I don't think ITV ever quite got to the dizzy heights of the BBC on Neighbours though, when they cut so much out of episodes they ended up merging them, so for example 4 episodes' worth of material would be completely re-cut down to 3 for UK viewers. Apart from the "skip an episode as it's too similar to a British real life event" thing (but hey, we'll blow up a plane above a rural village on Emmerdale for the 5th anniversary of Lockerbie...)

I'd agree with this. Not to take anything away from the fantastic performance Jess Tovey turned in, but when Daniel Bennett (himself a long-term fan) bought in Belle Taylor in the late 2000's it was clear she was based heavily on Bobby Simpson. Tearaway teenager, mother was an existing polarising character, turned her life around, met the love of her life then once everything was perfect, died. You mean like this? Although I believe this *may* be taken from the following day's recap.

So my memory may be fallible, however I'm pretty sure Mr. Snippy was at work when ITV first showed Bobby's fatal boating accident. I've just watched the episode for the first time in 30 years; it was definitely shown during the February half term as I distincly recall watching it at lunchtime, which if at school I obviously wouldn't be able to do. My overriding memory back in 1994 was the freeze-frame being Bobby, Luke and Adam all suspended in mid-air after hitting the log. But on the My5 version, it's followed by a random scene in the shop with Tug (who's gone to oversee Alf's delivery) before a pan across the water to reveal some floating lifejackets. So I'm pretty sure ITV cut that final scene. Does anyone else recall this?

Do we know when the main show is resuming, now the Christmas schedules are confirmed?

Some we've seen before and a lot are Channel 5 era (but the majority of the show is C5 era now so...) but that's a decent lineup. The first Christmas episode is lovely.

Are these airing on 5 Star or just streaming?

Johnny Ruffo has lost his battle with Brain Cancer. https://news.sky.com/story/former-home-and-away-star-johnny-ruffo-dies-aged-35-13004507

My5 on a computer is HD, oddly - as is the feed of 5 Star! My5 does have some content in HD via Sky and Virgin, but you have to access the content through your provider's interface, not go into the app. ITV and Channel 4 used to work like this but because you can fast forward through the ads, they've followed the BBC in forcing you into the app - which is fine as both ITV X and Channel 4 Streaming are HD now. Channel 5 haven't gone there yet.

Interestingly although the picture does seem a bit "soft" the 5 Star showing via Virgin is significantly better quality than 5 Star "linear". Not sure what it's like for Sky. I know Sky Glass and Sky Stream get 5 Star in HD. Virgin definitely doesn't.