cymbaline

She's referring to Rebecca and Alan. In episode 98 we hadn't even seen Alan yet. He didn't come along for another month or so.

I never said Bill wasn't entitled to an education. But was it right to send a young man with an obvious intellectual disability to a school that wasn't set up to help him properly? That was the point I clearly made a mess of making. I'm sorry if I offended you.

Did they ever say that he had autism? I don't know enough about the condition to spot the signs in Nico. I just assumed that they had given him something generic to suit the story. You're dead right about how badly the entire thing was treated. He should've been getting more help, though maybe having a non-English-speaking grandmother would always be a stumbling block. There'll always be louts like Lance and Martin in this world but Fisher was way out of line. When I started watching H&A from scratch a couple of years ago, I was surprised at how badly written Fisher's character was. Nico was just one person he was horrible to. They had Bill Cunningham (Luke's brother) a few years later. He had an acquired brain injury if I remember rightly. I haven't seen those episodes for a while but I remember that being handled better. He still had a rough time in school (not sure he should've been sent there) and I thought Michael was very hard on him when he broke into the house to see Fin. But it did touch on the issue of a teenage boy developing feelings for a girl of his own age despite being child-like in other ways.

If the Fletchers were to sell up and move to a seaside town these days, would they get as much bang for their buck? Their house in the city looked like a dingy dive of a place. They sold that and got a lovely big house and a caravan park near a beach.

Overcast, 11°C (51°F)

The original Bayside Diner was a really good upgrade and I guess they spent the money on that set when it became evident that H&A wasn't a 3 month wonder. I'd still love to come in, sit at one of the booths, and pig out on a burger, milkshake and Pippa's baking. The less said about the makeover the better ?

It's an interesting "what if?", isn't it? If the shop had survived, I think it'd look like any other modern-day convenience store. But I'd have liked to see the people behind the late 90's Bayside Diner makeover have a go at it. That was so garish, they should've been handing out sunglasses at the door. The exterior, on the other hand, is something I'm more interested in. If you've not read about the store, there's an interesting write-up on this very site. They used a derelict old store that was scheduled for demolition and gave it a brief new lease of life. But it ultimately had to go and that's why Dodge burned it down. In hindsight, it could've become a tourist trap an iconic location if they'd saved the building or replicated it elsewhere.

I wonder did they ditch that larger store because the set was a bit too big? It only lasted 18 months or so onscreen before they downsized Alf. The newer store was a nicer set to look at and it kept the actors in a tighter space.

Alf's store (the smaller one from 1991 onwards) was a fascinating place. Was there anything he didn't stock? Toys, hats, exotic foods, you name it. He also must've had store rooms that expanded and contracted, just like Yabbie Creek. He could vanish without a trace into the store room for entire episodes, while his staff and customers yakked away without interruption.

Thanks for filling in the gaps - I'd forgotten about that. Still though, it's something that'd be treated differently now.

Yes but that doesn't cancel the other out. Lance 'n Martin could've done with a good trashing.

Way back in the first season, Lance and/or Martin bored a hole in the wall of the shower block so they could spy on nekkid laydeez in there. My memories of those episodes are fuzzy now but I recall it being treated as something of a comedy story. Predictably, they messed up and had to evade the apoplectic partner of their first victim.

Roxanne could be pretty infuriating at times. The car storyline is a case in point. In the real world, it's eminently sensible to bring someone along with you when you're in the market for a second-hand car. Had she never seen The Big Steal? ? There were times when she was so pig-headed just for the sake of it. if they were to do a "where are they now?" about Roxanne, I think we'd find her running some sort of hippy yoga/sculpture retreat, where she sells alternative remedies on the side. She'd still be single and railing against the patriarchy.

The Steve and Dodge story is pretty dark when you think about it. First, he firebombs Celia's old store and kills Steven's uncle Philip. Then he's fostered by the Fletchers and lives there for a while before they realise what an evil creep he is. Then some years later he murders Irene's husband and comes back to Summer Bay to stalk Steven. Even though the pair of them went off a cliff after their "end of level baddie" fight, nobody has ever found his body. So...is he still out there somewhere waiting for his moment to get back at Steven again?

I don't know if you'd call it dark but the Edward Dunglass storyline has stayed with me. Being told you have an incurable degenerative disease has got to be the most terrifying thing anybody can deal with.

Neighbours has been cancelled twice and Brookside is long gone. That suggests that confining a soap to a residential area doesn't always work. Emmerdale changing its format didn't hurt its ratings either and it continued to attract a large audience for years.

A lot of Nick's police work was done off-screen and some of it appeared to be fairly mundane. Speed traps, police escorts, the occasional troublesome kid or a break-in. The only serious crimes I can think of are the ones relating to Karen and Revhead. Maybe there were others but I've forgotten.

But if you look back at the teens who were on Home and Away, most of them were very good-looking people. Social media mightn't have been around at the time but if you were a fan of these young actors, there were always photos and posters of them in teen magazines. I also think that if social media had been a thing at the time, they'd all have been on it. Can you imagine how many followers Dieter Brummer would've had? I've said before that old-skool Home and Away was a model that was unsustainable. I loved the show when I was a teenager and tried not to miss an episode (my stubborn parents refused to buy a VCR for years). My classmates were equally enthusiastic about it. We used to talk about it in school and I remember the "Oh my god, Tom died" conversations the day after that episode aired. But then we all got older and just stopped watching. Everyone I know just grew out of it. It didn't matter at the time because there was always going to be a new batch of kids coming along behind us, ready to pick up the mantle. Except now, youngsters don't watch TV. It's even debatable how much catch-up TV they watch from established TV stations. It makes sense that they'd aim for an older audience and more mature storylines. Having said that, they have gone too far. I think they could still do well if they toned things down and brought it back to something closer to its roots. They could bring fostering back in, easing in some foster kids with existing couples. Getting rid of chunks of the cast would be easy ? Send Lyrik off on a never-ending tour à la Bob Dylan, meaning we'd never see them again. A police station in the middle of nowhere needs a new cop - bye bye Cash and Felicity. The lack of crime and big bangs means we see lees of the hospital i.e. no need for doctors and paramedics....

I agree with you to a certain extent. I don't like how far the producers have strayed from the show's origins. If you didn't see Alf or Irene or Marilyn would you even know what you were watching? Having said that, I don't know how long 1990s-style H&A would've survived. When I watch those old episodes with adult eyes, I can see some reasons why they moved away from the original format. It's an uneasy mixture of shows made for teens and something aimed at adults. I mentioned that example of the sausages because this handful of episodes was more like a morality tale that you'd show kids. Jack learned that lying is bad and it was like an Aesop's fable but with more sausages. That was the fundamental problem with the show. It was like Grange Hill crossed with a conventional soap at times. Having said that, I don't find much to like in newer H&A. Leaving aside the baggage of what it was like 30 years ago, it's charmless these days. It badly needs a reboot but I get the impression the producers aren't that fussed. As long as it plods along as it is, and they can sell it abroad everything is fine.

My guess is that Carly ended up as a full-time mum for years, looking after the kids. I seem to remember her saying something along the lines of Ben being away a lot when she returned at a later date. That was probably the best solution for them to stay together. Even though Carly changed her mind about being an army wife, would her misgivings about that life really have dissipated? Ben's friends Dave and Pete certainly weren't good advertisements for the military and you'd hope Carly made some friends of her own.

No. Both it and society have moved on. Last night I randomly watched a few episodes which centred around Jack's continuous lies and a lot of sausages. If you tried to explain that to a modern-day fan, they'd laugh and ask was everything OK at home

It's the hair ?

I assume Luke's luscious locks swayed everything?

I have two theories on this. One is that Dave/Pete are basically the same character. They're both yobs who like getting drunk and actively try to undermine their friend's relationship. That's a lousy thing to do in my book, no matter how much you want your friend to be single. The other is that Pete came along as a fresh pair of eyes and was horrified to see his henpecked mate Ben growing cabbages and living in a tiny pink cottage. He also sort of managed to succeed where Dave didn't. He got Ben back into the army but didn't get him to lose Carly permanently. I think Ben mentioned Dave when Pete let him know he was going to come visit. Ben assured Carly that Pete was a top bloke and that she'd like him.

That wasn't always a good thing. There were times in the early 90s when Home and Away seemed to be the Sophie Show. And there's only so much of Rebekah Elmaloglou shouting that anybody can take. She had a really irritating gasp/grunt thing she did before uttering just about every line. Somebody should've pulled her aside and told her to stop. Then of course, Angel came along and we got far too much Shane and Angel.