The Neighbours Watch: 1985–1989
by Kristin Battestella
When Amazon revived the then-canceled Australian soap opera Neighbours in 2022, they also offered on demand episode batches from the show's thirty year history. However, these "iconic episodes" were abrupt highlights leaving frustrating story gaps and cliffhangers. Thankfully, the new Official Neighbours Classics YouTube Channel provides viewers like me who didn't see the eighties heights on Ramsay Street a chance to witness the entire saga in order. While bemusingly pleasant and perfect for background viewing, the 1985-89 seasons of Neighbours offer a lot of good, plenty of bad, and even some ugly pastiche. And I don't mean the mullets. I hate mullets!
Finding its Legs
Honestly, I'm not surprised Neighbours was initially canceled after its dull 1985 debut season before being rescued on a new network with the 1986 arrival of Anne Charleston as Madge Mitchell, nee Ramsay. I dislike her brother Max's gruff, Tom Ramsay's copycat replacement, and was also totally annoyed by the original Lucy Robinson and all the bad things that happen to her. To keep the cul de sac wholesome, Neighbours offers villainous meaty to contract guests like Andrea with the paternity lies or recurring high school pests like Sue Parker – giving them more attention than a main cast that isn't fully developed. The Classic YouTube channel options to watch single episodes or weekly blocks highlights this uneven story balance that permeates throughout Neighbours. Heavy plots and humorous to-dos are given equal weight with major crises resolved in a word. Contests and schemes can be so simple but serious kidnappings and thefts or medical emergencies are minor compared to the scandals of American soaps in the eighties. The starving old lady neighbour they don't really know and her sad dog are one of several compelling, unexpected storylines superior to the increasing teen drama, but on and off again relationships or pranks between characters are often forgotten the following week. The nature of any soap opera is to rinse and repeat, and marathoning now reveals just how much Neighbours continually recycles. This quickly becomes a disservice to Geoff Paine as Clive Gibbons, who is the hero doctor, class clown, or poetic sage of Ramsay Street as needed. His romantic plots are perpetually short term D.O.A.s contributing to the revolving guest door. Fortunately, Elaine Smith's former stripper Daphne Lawrence is our mature anchor; a strong independent character providing support to the youths while running her own coffee shop and doing right for herself. Her back and forth romance with Shane goes on too long amid several false starts with Daphne and Paul Keane as Des Clarke but their marital stories are superb. Anne Haddy's grandmother Helen Daniels is excellent in tackling all the ups and downs of raising a family, business dilemmas, and mid-life romance. She even gets a few unfortunately short-lived scandals! As a new viewer who had only see Amazon's piecemeal, it's great to see the entire rekindling between migraine inducing Madge and Ian Smith as lovable fuddy-duddy Harold Bishop. Basil begats Bouncer for a host of canine themed plots, and the Ramsay Street Olympics sets off what Neighbours does best – slice of life stories involving the entire ensemble. Cross country excursions gone wrong and lost in the bush stories here are better than the Revival's more recent Outback escapades because rather than focusing on guest villains, the suspense remains Ramsay and Robinson immediate.
Middle-aged housewives and grandmothers were the soap opera watchers of the day, but here those ladies are the ones who get things done. Neighbours is very good when the funny plots and serious stories are well interwoven. Madge learns to drive and Bouncer solves Helen's haunted apartment. Choir gossip has everyone believing Harold is an animal in the sack, and his car accident has not one but three ladies point fingers and taking him into their care. An entire episode is dedicated to poker playing men in one house and women playing scrabble in another, and it's high drama arguing about the funny money and dictionaries. Harold's bucks party also offers orange juice, Mozart, and his tie salesman mini me son David, and when The Ramsays and The Robinsons are forced to live together, the petty little tensions are delicious. Alan Fletcher – later to become Neighbours' Doctor Karl Kennedy – is here as a fill-in mechanic of the week, and the infectious introduction of Lucinda Cowden as Melanie Pearson is great fun. Annie Jones as Jane Harris is also a consistent delight. “Plain Jane Super Brain” goes through many important storylines with arcs and growth allowing the character to mature rather than stagnate. Postpartum depression was not often addressed in 1987, and initially this is a powerful plot for Daphne before the story devolves into the jealous husband feeling left out so the wife has to favor both man and baby. Amazon really dropped the ball in not providing all the classic episodes, as being able to see Daphne's exit in full is some of Neighbours' best. Myra de Groot as mother-in-law Eileen Clarke is likewise brilliant in everything from bad salmon mousse to remarrying Des' father Malcolm. Secret adoptions, pill abuse with a baby in jeopardy, depression, and starvation are excellent, emotional stories. The wedding cake is destroyed, love triangles commence, and the adult drama on Neighbours is leaps and bounds above the repetitive youth plots thanks to the spiteful crone that is Vivean Gray as Nell Mangel. Her hideous portrait is charming as is her Dear Georgette advice column. Mrs. Mangel and Eileen Clarke read tea leaves and misinterpreted psychic predictions ensue. We love to hate her even when Mrs. Mangel loses her memory and has a heart attack – using her health to earn just a bit of sympathy when she only has herself to blame if no one on Ramsay Street actually likes her except Bouncer. I'm glad Nell Mangel, Wedding Coordinator from Hell gets threatened for her meddling but also receives her own marital send off, for her departing flashbacks don't shy away from all the wonderful trouble she wrought.
Unfortunately by the late eighties, Neighbours skews younger and younger with the recast Lucy coming and going on school holidays for childlike stupids or attempted teen sophistication as needed. New kids crowd the Robinson house, and Alan Dale as Jim Robinson deals with lookalike women Ruth and Beverly when Zoe was better. Critical business ventures and financial Robinson ruin take a backseat while lawn mowing schemes repeat the departed Shane and Clive. Teens fail at frozen pizza experiments and problematic children become contrived tangents. Henry Ramsay gets on my nerves immediately, and it's tough to tell who is going to be permanent and who's just a guest with everyone after Russell Crowe's brief stint detracting from the core cul de sac. Why are the Italian guests stereotypical Lotharios? Neighbours finally has an Aboriginal but unfortunately negative story with a burial ground interfering in the Lassiter's hotel development. Stefan Dennis' manager Paul Robinson claims he respects their beliefs but presents the building plans as if what's best for The Daniel's Corporation is paramount for everyone. Losing the strong women who would object hurts Neighbours, and the unhealthy looking, thin, glassy eyed cast seems like the soap stardom is getting to them. Oft the bread and butter of stateside soaps, courtroom drama largely happens off screen, recounted after the fact while going house to house with food. So much food! Neighbours jumps the shark with a ridiculous, garish church sock hop, and a Yankee modeling executive suddenly dropping engagement diamonds on Jane is just a preposterous nothing burger. It gets old fast when Henry and Bronwyn bounce from house to house and ruin something every week. Helen has a stroke but it's more important that Henry blame Bronwyn for going back to school and not paying enough attention to him. His voice impersonations and murder mystery dress up are asinine not funny – coming off as dumb and desperate attempts to keep luring in young viewers. Weeks are spent on Nick and Sharon running away, on the road with a dollar to their name and shoveling chicken shit before rushing back to Ramsay Street at the first emergency. Instead of slice of life ensemble storytelling, Neighbours leans on youthful minutia that's really a disservice to the cast and the audience. By 1989, new characters are already borrowing from earlier stories and repeating the teen angst.
The Scott and Charlene Conundrum
Marathoning these weekly blocks, teen power couple Jason Donovan as Scott Robinson and Kylie Minogue as Charlene Mitchell are immediately insufferable with back and forth professions of love and fighting over the dumbest things flip flopping from episode to episode – sometimes in scene as needed. Repeated music montage flashbacks at the playground and rescues from blown up trailers can't disguise how their grating gets old fast. Even other characters question if they had a dime every time Scott and Charlene broke up over annoying money making schemes, idiotic scams, and their own stupidity. I get that they're teens with all over the place emotions. However their contrivances are one of the weakest stories on Neighbours, and I can't fathom how this was the most popular moment of the entire series. Today high schoolers marrying at seventeen just to move in with parents next door and have sex feels more backwoods than progressive. The measles scare the night before the wedding was their best moment, and I wish the nuptials had been Scott and Charlene's show exit. Scott fails his exams and goes job hunting on a skateboard; they literally lose cash constantly but people continually loan the couple money. Interesting dilemmas are shoved aside for more and more Scott and Charlene because no one knows how to live on love but them! Each teen becomes so distraught and delusional that their families apologize for wanting rent. Between arguing about his homework and her apprenticeship, each also gets the wandering eye in totally pure flirtations cum excuses for misunderstandings and repeated wedding flashbacks. They scream that if one walks out the door, the marriage is over but it's children playing Dynasty. That extramarital canoodling leads to Scott wanting to have a band aid baby, which is a terrible idea and everyone tells them so. Such a plot should have never been suggested, and Neighbours would have my utmost recommendation if I could skip over the Scott and Charlene melodrama. Our intrepid couple become the heroes of every story – uncovering corrupt business partners, nabbing incriminating photos of bad guys, offering wisdom to struggling couples, and resolving almost every plot with their innocent can do. Charlene's lucky coin goes missing and she cries to Scott's boss that he's working three jobs and can't spend time with her. So instead Charlene's departs and an obnoxious model tries to seduce poor, lonely Scott. Maybe Scott and Charlene marrying so frigging soon was actually a damn storytelling mistake? A scandalous book and murder plots on par with American soap malicious are dropped for yet another chaste kissing dilemma. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Scott because so many babes tempt him? Every frustrating non-dalliance drags on with Scott insisting he is right no matter how many others point out he is flat wrong. In the end he even blames the “backward” stereotypical Greeks for their restrictive values, and I cannot tell you how glad I was when Scott unceremoniously disappears.
Now then as to Guy Pearce as Mike Young – the impetus for this Neighbours excursion. I've been doing a Career Re-Watch of his oeuvre, but you would never know Pearce was going to become one of our best contemporary actors by seeing his mullet, baby face, and amateur delivery here. Despite appearing in more than 900 episodes, there isn't a whole lot for Mike to do except make the smoothies and eat the food in the background at the coffee shop. Of Neighbours' oft misguided musical attempts, Pearce's actually playing the saxophone is the most fun but it's used the least. After his earnest abusive introduction, most of Mike's storylines are the same girl troubles – first on and off with Nikki then off and on with Jane. There are random Canberra chicks, swimming babes, and more meaningless flings, and Jane shoves a cake in his face over it. She worries that every time he takes a trip, he falls for another girl, and I'll be damn Neighbours has been giving Mike the same stories for forty years! Even Bouncer gets more adventures than Mike. He bullies an Aboriginal ex-schoolmate but it's just a prank, and the show experiments with Mike going bad or doing humorous skits because Neighbours doesn't really know what to do with him despite the well done post-Daphne tears and revenge. Des and Mike as bachelor dads in search of a nanny would have been a great sitcom, but Mike's too often the sidekick with increasingly less appearances. Granted, Pearce asked for filming breaks to pursue less than stellar films but the gaps in his episodes reveal how little he was actually used. The Bronwyn romance just repeats the Jane school drama and love triangle with Henry. When Mike finally becomes a teacher, he's caught in a kissing a student plot before a sabbatical on his motorcycle. Paralyzing Jenny in a motorcycle accident is arguably Mike's biggest story yet it all happens off screen. His leather jacket means Mike has an attitude now, and it's ironic that sullying the character actually gives Pearce more to do. Of course, Henry's comedy undercuts the dark dream sequences and wheelchair-bound guilt, and the disabled obligations are resolved with little fanfare. After repeat teaching strife, Mike is the villain against Des and Jane's engagement, leaning over people's shoulders with passive aggressive petty insults. The whole street tells him to grow up, boo hoo yet feigns smiles for his Ramsay Street birthday party – until Henry runs over his saxophone. Mike admits his duplicity when trying to win back Bronwyn just for spite, and had Mike been a deceptive social climber sooner, it might have been more interesting. Instead these brooding non-stories wasted time with him Neighbours did not have. Happy couples want him to be an enthusiast best man, so his drunken one night stands and pithy bitchings are suddenly dropped. One wonders why Neighbours had him return for a handful of late 1989 episodes when new viewers probably wouldn't know who he is or why he's off to visit his injured mother with no real exit. I can certainly see why Pearce was initially displeased with his original time on Neighbours, for he looks healthier in the end, as if the burden of Neighbours had been lifted from his shoulders. That single dangling crescent moon earring though, would wear!
Messy Declines and Departures
Though once pleasant nostalgic viewing, by the second half of 1989, I am pretty over Neighbours, too. It's frustrating to read that the producers deliberately mirrored Scott and Charlene in other characters, continually referenced them onscreen, and didn't even change the credits because they didn't want viewers to know they were completely gone. The revolving cast door only gets more crowded with obnoxious kid do-overs and even younger tween kisses. Interesting characters like pesky aunt Mrs. Chubb, banker Penelope Porter, tacky stepmother Gloria Lewis, and Jane's selfish mother Amanda Harris are too brief. Overheard secrets on Katie's walkie talkie sow dissent about how everyone really feels in a deliciously simple way to drive several plots at once but the conflicts are resolved too quickly. The grating dialogue for Joe Mangel is also extremely jarring, and it's rich that he becomes the hero over his ex-wife's new abusive husband when he is a cruel, heavy handed father to little Toby. Helen's stroke and her struggle to paint again should have been primary, but another crazy seductress makes moves on Jim, and for all the funny lighthearted things that make Neighbours so cheery, the show seemed to realize the need for darker, if now predictable stories as the eighties sunshine waned. New people are treated as filler when too many regulars have breaks around the same time, and recurring ladies like Anne Scott-Pendlebury as Hilary Robinson should have always been permanent. Hilary and Mrs. Chubb's too brief humorous moments together could have been such gold! A big to-do is made whenever someone comes back from a trip/break/excuse, and then the episode is spent filling in the returning person on what we've been watching – as if Neighbours deliberately kept resetting for viewers each week in lieu of what else to do. Many storylines are isolated rather than true dialogue confidences, and characters who don't usually interact onscreen are presumed to be BFFs in the know as the lazy gardening partnerships repeat and loud, boorish tangents overtake important moments. Hilary feigns injury sympathies just as Mrs. Mangel had and every week a different kid is running away when not having another pet mishap. Neighbours copies itself when provocative drama like Sharon starving herself is better than Bouncer in peril and Toby's weekly sadness. Linda Harley-Clark as Harold's hippie daughter Kerry Bishop is initially an independent activist who nannies in Des' house where she and their kids thrive. Unfortunately, Kerry's then inexplicably paired with Joe and is forced to repent on each of her principles. Kerry frees birds, feeds homeless, and protest kangaroo products yet she is unnecessarily portrayed as the villain who doesn't stop to consider if her actions will make the hotel look bad.
Instead of prioritizing well done extortion plots, terrible dads, and serious family ensembles, characters bend for the dilemma of the week in foreseeable, silly plots or relationship misunderstandings because there are three engaged couples at the same time. Fortunately, Hilary moves to the cul de sac with a mysterious son, and the Sharon/Matthew/Nick triangle would have been far more intriguing had the latent homosexual angle been utilized, but I realize Neighbours in the eighties wouldn't dare. Hilary also has a romance and tries to be hip by going to see Friday the 13th Part 6 with the kids. The show returns to its roots with feuding Ramsays and Robinsons cutting each other's trees and dyeing the pool purple. Everyone has a health emergency at the same time, and it's actually pretty fun, unlike the contrived threats on Todd and Katie coming or going until Katie is actually written out after being unnecessarily prominent. Thanks to her being overused in every major story line, Jane's exit is also abrupt, grinding Neighbours to a halt as elder abuse plots and the briefly returning Clive can't save all the pointless misunderstandings. However I'm so glad to see the back of Henry especially after the radio show obnoxiousness where everyone else did his work for him off the air. Paul's villainy begins by bribing a councilman for a variance, but of course he's screwed over and repeatedly scammed by rookie employees, too. Fiona Corke's Gail Lewis is Paul's perfect match, but her story unfortunately degrades into silly baby brain shoplifting convictions. Most of their marriage fallout strangely happens off screen, yet it also makes the audience realize how impossible triplets would have been on the show. Paul's dramatic race to the airport is quite sad, and Gail's exit is another huge loss for Neighbours – leaving Des filling numerous gaps with phone calls from absent people before recounting everything to Melanie. Paul's on break so Des manages the hotel but then Des takes a break so Jim's running everything while Clive and Melanie now live in Des' house. There's no rhyme or reason to who is where with even a new minister on Ramsay Street as a love interest played for laughs with Melanie – but at least we see the origin of her pig collection! Even the Dear Georgette column returns, as if characters are defined by their jobs but jobs are interchangeable. There's even a clothes swap meet where prominent garments end up on different characters because personal style no longer matters. New people not in the credits, residents referred to no longer on the show, returning people inexplicably picking up where they left off – viewers stopped tuning in to Neighbours because we don't know who's on the dang show.
When updated titles finally happen, the poolside hi-jinks are recreated with new people as if audiences aren't supposed to notice the difference. Neighbours chose to stagnant, repeat, and replace without ever moving forward, and I'm amazed the soap survived this eighties cast exodus. 1989 was really a struggle to finish; I gave 1990 a few months but just didn't care about these strangers on Ramsay Street. Did I like Neighbours? Yes! I'm glad I had the opportunity to watch all the sunshine eighties heights. The Classic YouTube Channel format provides far more entertainment than Amazon's giveth and taketh. There were segments I thoroughly enjoyed, but the good is often too interlaced with the bad. Does Neighbours have the repeat value of stateside soap opera titans? That I don't know. I need to see Neighbours' 2010 “Who pushed P.R.?” drama in its entirety to be sure.
