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The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 30

Publication:
The Agei
Location:
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Issue Date:
Page:
30
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Green Guide Thursday 31 December i wig)i iMwwi iwo ij I iajiui no auuici iwe By RAYMOND GILL radical but an attempt to get back to the original concept "The initial concept was a situation where young people solved their own problems and were active in their relationships with the older generation," Bradley explains. "Prior to Neighbours, parents were always wise and children were always in trouble." After nine years and almost 2000 episodes. Neighbours, in a way, has become a victim of its own success. Bradley says characters who began in 1983 as fresh-faced teens are now almost 30 years old. "As the characters have got older the skew of the show was becoming older and as a consequence we were moving way from the original concept" he says.

FOR VIEWERS, the return to the original concept has meant a greater focus on younger cast members and youth issues, a faster story turnaround and some long-overdue redecoration of characters' homes. A Neighbours producer, 30-year-old Sally Anne Kerr, says these changes are all a part of the "brighter, fresher approach" that is carried through to what the characters wear. "I think they are all characters people can relate to," Kerr says. "There is still a comic streak running through it but there are also issues of teenage romance, problems of family break-ups, smoking and drinking. Next year we will continue with those themes as well as the problems of first young love." agers and women.

However, Ian Bradley maintains that the emphasis on youth is not simply to appeal to the teenage audience that advertisers so desperately seek. "The interesting thing we have found is that everybody likes watching vibrant interesting' young people, but a teenage audience won't watch older people unless it is something like The Golden Girls. We never particularly aimed at the teenage audience but found we were losing this group." Bradley attributes this audience loss to the number of shows that have imitated the Neighbours concept shows such as Home and Away and Street. ALTHOUGH Neighbours' Australian audience has been eroding, its extraordinary I success has held up well in England (Ken-says its attracts 18 million viewers a day). Grundys has a contract with Ten to supply the show for one year here and its English contract is for two-and-a-half years.

Bradley does not dismiss the possibility that one day the company might be making a soapie about young Aussies for British consumption only. He notes that hit Australian series usually have a life span of only seven to eight years, although he claims that the Neighbours use-by date is still a way off. "Though I don't think we will see 30s or 35s (ratings points) for a series based on a family again," he says. Neighbours' 1993 season begins on 11 January at 6.30 pm on Ten. DP YOU are still a fan of Neighbours, you may have noticed some changes this year that some of its teen characters might call "radical'.

Driven by a decline in ratings (in 1988 the show was regularly hitting 30 in Melbourne but this year has often hovered around the mid teens). Neighbours producers Grundy Television embarked on a big overhaul to woo back fans. The strategy, put simply, meant packing the show with even more fresh-faced teens, while some of its older residents for example Madge (Anne Charleston) have been allowed to choof off to Queensland. Neighbears viewers might also have been surprised to discover that fictional Erinsbor-ough once a daggy outer suburb where life revolved around one takeaway and a beer garden has apparently become one of the grooviest outer suburbs on the planet Even the Ma and Pa characters have recently been thrown head-first into some very un-neighborty subplots. A few months ago Doug Willis (Terry Donovan) found himself in a nasty Utile marriage infidelity storyline that appears to have been lifted straight from Fatal Attract! (without the sink scene).

According to Ian Bradley, Grundy's president of drama worldwide and executive producer of Neighbours, these changes are not Two of 1 992's fresh young faces in 'Neighbours': Rachel Blakely (Gaby Willis) and Scott Michaelson (Brad Willis). Grundys has tried to ensure that Neighbours stays in tune with teenage interests by including young writers in their production team (the youngest is 20). "We also keep an eye on newspapers and magazines so we keep up with trends and with language," Kerr says. The emphasis on youth has always been part of the show's attraction and Neighbours' core audience has traditionally been a blend of teen Microarts have shifted the Power-Pro SPEEDSTAR into OVERDRIVE with the Intel 4S6-66MHz Overdrive CPU. Its like putting an extra gear onto a 486-50MHz.

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About The Age Archive

Pages Available:
1,291,868
Years Available:
1854-2000