The
Australian soap went from fuzzy romances and 80s mullets to an over-reliance on memory loss as a plot device
The year is 1988: Margaret Thatcher has become the UK’s longest-serving 20th-century prime minister; Prince Charles has narrowly avoided death-by-avalanche while on a skiing holiday; and a leather-jacketed Bros are topping the charts. And, on 8 November, nearly 20 million people tune in to watch Scott and Charlene’s wedding on Neighbours.
Originally broadcast the year before in Australia, the storyline marked a high point in the soap’s two-year history, the spectacle of Jason Donovan gazing lovingly upon his bride Kylie Minogue as the piano balladry of Angry Anderson’s Suddenly plays setting the nation’s hearts aflutter. It was an escapist idyll for a
Britain still coming to terms with the grim industrial overhaul of the most recent miners’ strike and the spectre of continued structural inequality. Here was a world we could get lost in.