Somewhat amazing about the fact that a made-up street in a Melbourne suburb turns out more famous people than most film schools in the world. Neighbours, an Australian soap opera that takes place in the made-up suburb of Erinsborough, has been doing that for almost 40 years, and it just keeps doing it.
Emily Blunt. Bruce Willis. Guy Pearce. Kylie Minogue. These aren’t small details on a trivia card. These are the stars of movies that made a lot of money, won Oscars, and played to packed stadiums. At some point, each of them was just another person who lived on Ramsay Street.
It looked like the show was over in early 2022. After 37 years and almost 9,000 episodes, its main British broadcast partner, Channel 5, stopped funding it. Efforts to find new funding sources failed. An emotional send-off aired at the end of the show in July of that year, drawing nearly 1.4 million viewers in Australia and just over 4 million in the U.K. Kylie Minogue came back in person. Guy Pearce came back. From different points of view, the fact that Margot Robbie showed up via video message says it all about how busy the schedules of Neighbours alumni get.
Then, after four months, Amazon Freevee and the production company Fremantle said the show would be back. New shows. A new way to stream. Old cast members are coming back. That seemed like the kind of plot twist that the show’s writers would have gone for during a slow week.
It looks like Amazon gets it, while Channel 5 might not have. Neighbours is more than just a soap opera. It’s an actor pipeline that works, with a global network of alumni and a reputation built up over 40 years. When the revival was announced, Lauren Anderson, head of content programming at Amazon Studios, said the same thing. She said that the show’s library of thousands of episodes would bring together new and old fans. That is more than just a feeling. That’s the stock.
For a practical reason, Neighbours has historically helped people get jobs at a rate that would make most drama schools proud. Young cast members have to work all the time because episodes are shot every day on a small budget in suburban Melbourne. You can’t think too much about a scene. You learn how to move on, hit the marks, and remember the lines. It’s boring, repetitive, and really helpful training. It was there that Margot Robbie lived before anyone outside of Australia knew her name. She wasn’t the only one. A lot of people looked up to her.
The Amazon revival does more than just give fans more Ramsay Street drama. It also shows where the demand for old content is right now around the world. As part of the deal, streaming rights to thousands of old episodes will be made available before the new season starts. These episodes will be available for free on Amazon Freeview in the UK and the US and on Prime Video in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Network 10 has the rights to show first-run in the United States. It has been the show’s home in Australia for 36 years. This is the kind of rights arrangement that happens when a property has been around for a long time and built up real, complicated value.
It’s still not clear if the revival will bring out the next Margot Robbie. That’s not really the point. What Neighbours has always done best is give up-and-coming actors a place to shine, first in front of a few million viewers and then, in some cases, to everyone. The pipe is now open again. It’s likely that Hollywood is aware of this and should be paying attention.
