Thursday, January 19, 2023

Home & Away Turns 35

Earlier this week, Home and Away turned thirty-five years old.

As I know I've written many times over the years, the Australian series is my favourite soap opera of all time.

There was a time when it wasn't.

Home & Away

I recall the first time I learned of Home and Away. It was featured in an issue of Look-In magazine - a publication my father bought for me every week back in the mid-to-late 1980s. 

The mag informed me that Home and Away was going to launch on ITV and be that channel's Australian soap to compete against Neighbours. 

Back then, Neighbours was one of the biggest things on the BBC, so it was fair game to expect another Aussie soap to be on a rival channel.

The tribalist in me was against Home and Away. No way was I going to move my allegiance away from Neighbours.

I became a fan within a year or two.

It took some time, but I finally understood that it is possible to enjoy BOTH shows. It was also easy to with the schedules allowing us to watch Home and Away on ITV and then flip right over to the BBC to catch Neighbours at 5:35PM each weeknight.

In the early 2000s, Home and Away went dark. 

This was following Channel 5 acquiring the rights. If my memory serves me correctly - the programme was off our screens for a year before it launched on its new British channel.

It took me a while to adjust to Home and Away being on a new channel. I'll also have to be frank - at the time I was not enjoying some of the characters, so it was a struggle to ease back in.

We're now over twenty years since the switch to Channel 5. Somewhere in the early 2000s, Home and Away became my number one series to watch. 

It's now, until the Neighbours comeback later this year, the only soap opera I watch.

Here's to thirty-five more years. And more.

No comments:

Post a Comment