Don Fisher storyline dropped in 2015-2017 (more details)

[James Martin]

I'm waiting for the day they pull the ultimate "Pretentious Drama" trick pioneered by Netflix - the 2:1 aspect ratio.  This is where you get thin-ish black bars top and bottom on a standard widescreen set, in a bid to make something look cinematic and expensive.

I agree it's not a soap now, but that's what it should be.  Yes, you can have the odd cinematic episode - the direction on the two Sarah Lewis episodes up to the Olympic Cliffhanger 18 (!) years ago are some of the finest camerawork the show has ever had.  But because it was an exception the impact hit the viewer like a train.  You had that build up but nothing prepared you for Tammin Sursok's iconic scream as the episode closed.  Still my single favourite H&A cliffhanger - plotted by Bevan and written by Daniel no less.

Now it's made too filmic and the big events and landmark episodes lose their impact.

[Skylover]

On 15/03/2022 at 01:00, Red Ranger 1 said:

I think that's an argument in favour of 7 Network getting it right. Because, you know, which show's ending this year?

Sure, but Neighbours acknowledging the past isn't what caused its demise. Neighbours ended because it was on a less popular channel in Australia and they moved it to a digital channel in 2011.

If we were going by quality, H&A would have been the one that ended, because new characters like the 'band' aren't exactly riveting characters. I don't think H&A should have droves of past characters returning like Neighbours, but equally I don't see why characters like John and/or Irene's kids couldn't return, or Martha or Duncan.

[Red Ranger 1]

1 hour ago, Skylover said:

Sure, but Neighbours acknowledging the past isn't what caused its demise. Neighbours ended because it was on a less popular channel in Australia and they moved it to a digital channel in 2011.

If we were going by quality, H&A would have been the one that ended, because new characters like the 'band' aren't exactly riveting characters. I don't think H&A should have droves of past characters returning like Neighbours, but equally I don't see why characters like John and/or Irene's kids couldn't return, or Martha or Duncan.

Well, it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. I think Neighbours and Home and Away are/were pretty much at the two extremes. Home and Away only grudgingly acknowledges its past and is extremely reluctant to bring back old characters, while Neighbours tended to be made solely for the die-hards and ignore anyone for whom the return of a short-lived characters from 30 years ago was pretty meaningless. It might not be as appealing to people who frequent forums like this, but I think Home and Away's method is more likely to attract new viewers.

[Skylover]

20 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

Well, it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing. I think Neighbours and Home and Away are/were pretty much at the two extremes.

I certainly agree with this. H&A won't acknowledge its past, whereas Neighbours went overboard with nostalgia and bringing back characters. 

20 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

I think Home and Away's method is more likely to attract new viewers.

I don't agree with this though. I think Neighbours had it wrong, but I think H&A has it wrong too. If we look at what happened to Neighbours, it was when the producers neglected the past and focused on the current/future that the show started to decline. Susan Bower's era from 2008 to 2011 was arguably when the show was most neglectful of its past other than a handful of returns, and it was this time that saw the show moved to digital channel 11 in Australia, which ultimately led to its cancellation in 2022 due to Network 10 no longer providing adequate funding.

I personally think H&A's approach is harmful to the show and is likely to deter new viewers rather than draw them in - for a new viewer, it would be incredibly confusing to understand who any of the characters are and how they're connected. The only solid units are Alf/Roo/Martha (and recently Ryder) and then Justin/Leah/Theo. It's easy to understand how these characters are related, but when you get to characters like John, Marilyn and Irene, it's not easy to see what the purpose of their characters are or where they fit in and who they're related to if you don't know the backstory. I haven't watched H&A since 2019, but I think I'm right in saying that Marilyn lives with the Stewarts - for any new viewer, it's probably pretty hard to udnerstand that a 50-something year old woman is just living with some family friends she's known her whole life. It also wouldn't make much sense to a new viewer why random inter-changeable 20-somethings seem to end up living with a late 60-something Irene, or why they would want to, and John's completely isolated so it's not easy for new viewers to just know that he's part of the community and plays an important role in the Surf Club.

I think there's a balance and H&A hasn't quite achieved that and doesn't quite understand how using the past can be beneficial to the current show. John and Irene have a number of kids and grandchildren that the writers could draw in - Irene has Mick, Nathan, Damian and Finlay as kids, and who knows how many grandchildren by now, while John has his step-son Trey (who I know went to prison I think? but they could still draw on that character), his daughter Shandi who is pretty much a blank canvas and Jett. Rather than random people moving in with Irene, it would be good to explore her family history and introduce/re-introduce some of her family as regular characters. It's been long enough that any of her kids could be re-cast, though Nathan would be the best bet as he was never really a prominent character. Nathan was a bit of a baddie and could have a number of kids Irene doesn't know about.

They have done well in some ways - creating Ryder through Quinn was a good move for the Stewarts, and creating Theo for Justin and Leah has been good too - but they could do so much more. Duncan's return in 2016 was a bit of a wasted opportunity, I'd certainly like to see more of Duncan, whether re-cast or not, and I think Martha jr has loads of potential. She could even have kids now and she's been away for 12 years. There's also a lot of dramatic potential too with her having been on the run with Hugo. Jodi Gordon is also a high profile actress and will have fans from Neighbours too, so bringing her back would be a wise move. I understand there are possible off-screen reasons why they might avoid this though, which is fair enough but I think it's worth bringing the actress back.

Any of those scenarios use the past but invest in and look to the future. New viewers are more likely to be hooked in if the households make sense, and it would give the existing characters more purpose too. I know Home and Away is essentially about people creating proxy families in a sense, but I think you can still do that while letting it make sense in an overarching way.

I mean I'd love to see characters like Pippa back, but I know the show is different now and that's not the direction they're going in so I don't really expect someone like her to return. I wouldn't mind Sophie returning, as Bek Elmaloglou is quite high profile like Jodi Gordon now, and could bring her fans from Neighbours over too.

The viewing figures in the UK don't indicate that the method H&A uses is working - so it's lucky that they're locked into a lifetime commitment and that Network 7 seem so committed - because if that wasn't in place, 5 would pull out so fast our heads would spin.

H&A is so low quality these days but I do want it to do well and to survive - because it's now the only Australian soap left in production. But, I'm not convinced it will last with the bland, interchangeable 20-something love stories they do with random bunches of siblings, and the odd crime story. They could really do with being a bit more creative, but when you're restricted to colourist, homophobic casting and writing and aren't able to talk about the past, you can see how they're in a bind.

It's clear Lucy Addario is a yes woman to the higher ups at Network 7. Cameron Welsh managed to bring back Marilyn and made a bold decision to re-cast Roo back in 2010 (which were both excellent moves!). They were two of the last truly great decisions the show made really. I think it could do with a change in producer.

[Red Ranger 1]

21 hours ago, Skylover said:

I personally think H&A's approach is harmful to the show and is likely to deter new viewers rather than draw them in - for a new viewer, it would be incredibly confusing to understand who any of the characters are and how they're connected. The only solid units are Alf/Roo/Martha (and recently Ryder) and then Justin/Leah/Theo. It's easy to understand how these characters are related, but when you get to characters like John, Marilyn and Irene, it's not easy to see what the purpose of their characters are or where they fit in and who they're related to if you don't know the backstory. I haven't watched H&A since 2019, but I think I'm right in saying that Marilyn lives with the Stewarts - for any new viewer, it's probably pretty hard to udnerstand that a 50-something year old woman is just living with some family friends she's known her whole life. It also wouldn't make much sense to a new viewer why random inter-changeable 20-somethings seem to end up living with a late 60-something Irene, or why they would want to, and John's completely isolated so it's not easy for new viewers to just know that he's part of the community and plays an important role in the Surf Club.

I think you’re underestimating viewers’ intelligence, while also overestimating what they actually need to know. Irene is an older home owner who has younger characters lodging with her, which is as easy to understand as it was 20 or 30 years ago. You don’t need to know how long characters have been on the show or the order in which they arrived to understand their position on the show, much as with Neighbours using the Kennedys as landlords for random young people. Yes, sometimes Neighbours would come up with a grandson or niece to make it slightly less random, but Home and Away’s attempts to do that with Irene have ironically been among the least satisfying set-ups she was involved in. Retconning her long-lost “evil” son Mick into existence was one of the most disliked and distasteful storylines of the last decade and many of us would be happy to pretend he never existed. Similarly, going down the “obscure old character” route with Olivia fell flat because the continuity was completely shallow and the end result was that she might as well have been any old teenage girl living there.

I do think the show dropped the ball with John and Marilyn: An older couple acting as foster parents had good potential for both storylines and new characters, as I mentioned up-thread, and was completely muffed in favour of moving a teenager whose family were still on the show in with them for no good reason, and then breaking them up. But that doesn’t mean new viewers don’t get who they are. Marilyn is an old family friend who lives with the Stewarts: That doesn’t need explaining. John is something important in the surf club: Again, that’s clear to anyone who watches a couple of episodes of him. People don’t need to know their backstories and, if they are curious, that’s why sites like this exist, so they’re a lot better off than back in the 90s where it took me the best part of a decade to get it clear that Alf had three sisters. (Now see how long it takes for someone to insist there was four!) And don’t get me started on how long it took me to work out that Christopher and Duncan were actually Pippa and Alf/Ailsa’s sons and not just random children they babysitted once every few months.

The same goes for other characters: You don’t need too much intelligence to work out how the Parata household relate to each other, or the sibling relationships between Dean/Mackenzie, Cash/Felicity and Xander/Rose, or even who “the band” are: They’re a bunch of friends in a band! (You might not like the characters but that’s a different issue.) Compare this to Neighbours going so far down the route of trying to connect every character to the show’s past and/or current cast with contrived and unconvincing back stories and rewrites of history that you ended up with a household consisting of an older married couple, his granddaughter that he’s just found out about, her ex-husband’s grown-up son who she hardly ever met when she was married to his father, and her ex-husband’s brother’s daughter, where even the actors got confused about who their characters were related to!

Yes, going down the relative route can work as well and Home and Away’s not completely adverse to using it: Ryder and Theo, as you said, are two of the best recent examples and we’ve seen it used to introduce characters like Mackenzie and more recently Xander and Rose. But whereas Neighbours was centred around the idea of generations of the same families growing up in the same cul-de-sac, Home and Away was always a show built around providing a setting for a revolving door of young characters to live with its older characters, where the blood families of Tom/Michael and Pippa were very much subservient to the “found family” living with them: We never met a single blood relative of Tom apart from Christopher, Pippa’s brother and parents turned up but weren’t main characters, and Michael’s family were so secondary in importance that, despite him being on the show five and a half years, we never met his daughter and the show seemed to forget she existed somewhere around 1992. Plus the show forgot that Donald Fisher had a brother living in Summer Bay within fifty episodes.

Now, it’s certainly true that the age group of the characters has changed over the decades: Once upon a time there was practically no-one in the 18-30 range, now the majority of the cast are there. But I don’t see that as off-putting to new viewers.

[CaptainHulk]

You need a healthy mix of age groups, regardless of the show's tone. 

 

 

 

[James Martin]

I know things have moved on somewhat but Neighbours (initial) demise wasn't down to figures, it was down to financing and the inability to find a new UK broadcaster to foot the bill.  Amazon, of course, have far deeper pockets than the British and Australian networks all put together, hence it'll be back.

[cymbaline]

Back on topic, I was happy and sad to see Norman Coburn on Ray Meagher's This Is Your Life. I'm glad that he was able to give a nice tribute to Ray but he's definitely looking and sounding frail now  In a way, it's a blessing that the post-1995 episodes are as rare as hen's teeth online. Now people only get to see Don in his prime, rather than those later returns. I can understand why the actors come back but character-wise, it's rarely a good idea.