This Side of the Pond

I’m distraught this week to hear that Australian soap opera “Neighbours” has been cancelled after 40 years of baffling storylines written by people who have zero regard for logic or continuity. What upsets me the most is that you guys will now never have the chance to enjoy the silliness.

Neighbours has been airing on British television since I was a kid – my grandmother watched it religiously at precisely 1:38 p.m. every day. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long when it was added to the schedule here in the 1990s, and I consider that to be a great shame.

I suppose it was difficult to figure out what was going on, considering it began airing here some time after its original launch. It was hard enough to follow when you’d been watching from the start.

One doesn’t watch Neighbours for the searing social commentary. Like most soap operas, the life expectancy is horrifyingly low and people’s lives are suspiciously exciting.

But what set “Neighbours” apart was its total lack of interest in making sense. If the writers felt like including a scene or even an entire plotline, that thing was going in no matter how much shoehorning was needed to make it (sort of) work.

As an example, my favorite episode involved a mother and daughter who were fighting about…something, I honestly can’t remember…in a local park. All of a sudden, a man jumped out of the bushes to kidnap them.

The man bundled the mother-daughter duo into the back seats of their own car and climbed in beside them, brandishing a weapon to keep them subdued. In a triumph of dodgy logic – because no other characters were involved in this scene – the vehicle then drove itself away.

I don’t know why Neighbours became so popular in the UK, but it was all the rage in the 1980s. I even had trading cards at one point, and the biggest topic of conversation at my primary school was whether the characters Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan played would finally get married – they’re still considered national treasures in the UK today.

Surprisingly, considering the quality of the storylines, Neighbours has gifted the world some of its most popular actors. I’m sure you know quite a few of them, such as Guy Pearce of “The Hurt Locker”; the Marvel Universe’s version of Thor, Chris Hemsworth and both his thespian brothers; Margot Robbie of “I, Tonya” and “Suicide Squad”; Jesse Spencer from tv show “House”; Alan Dale from pretty much every show ever (including “Lost”, “24” and “Ugly Betty”); and Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies of the north, general of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the true emperor, otherwise known as Russell Crowe from “Gladiator”.

There are plenty more. Half of Hollywood, it seems, got its start on one Australian soap or another.

Robbie’s time on the soap will likely be remembered by most for her character’s decision to make Harold – an older man who wore bow ties and vests – try rapping, while wearing an afro wig. He promptly had a heart attack.

The scene ended with a Robbie sobbing, “I should never have made him rap.” It’s a lesson for us all.

It wasn’t Harold’s strangest plotline. At one point back in the day, while he was standing on a rock looking out to sea, his wife realized he’d disappeared. Only his spectacles remained, because he apparently had time to take them off and gently set them on the ground.

He reappeared five years later, calling himself Ted. Though suffering from amnesia, he managed to remember he needed to pick up some boxes from Marlene’s house. His disappearance was never explained.

Susan Kennedy once got amnesia, too, after slipping on some milk. She thought she was 16 years old and left her husband to search for her high school sweetheart. The actress who played her claimed it was based on the true story of an English woman, but I suspect they elaborated on some of the details.

Then there’s Paul Robinson, one of the most complicated characters in the history of television. He was a murderer and arsonist, whose son also tried to frame him for murder by burying someone he’d killed himself under a rose bush in his back yard.

That same son also tried to kill him twice and, when that didn’t work, figured he’d steal his brother’s identity by killing him off in a car crash because he was annoyed his father didn’t know he existed – Paul, for some reason, seems to have thought he had twin sons instead of triplets, but once again I can’t remember how that worked.

Keeping up so far? Paul also lost his leg in an accident and was given a false one, but the actor kept forgetting to walk with a limp. One of his final storylines involved blowing up the local hotel complex because he wanted it for himself (I don’t know how that works, either) and then murdering the character who caught him in the act. Nobody ever found out he did it.

But the most famous inexplicable death was a character known as Stingray, because of course he was. (There was also a Toadfish, a Stonefish and a Tadpole. Please don’t ask me why.)

Various members of the cast were gathered in the middle of the street for a birthday party, because of course they were, when Stingray decided he’d step away from the dancing for a rest.

He then died. Of sitting down.

I was saddened to hear the network that has been delighting us with Neighbours since 1985 has decided to drop the show, and that no other network is prepared to pick up the slack. It was the standard of bafflement to which all other soaps could only hope to aspire, and we shall never see its like again.