By Yahya Mahmoud

In February 2025, EastEnders celebrated its 40th year on the air with an extended episode to mark the occasion. A month later, Neighbours celebrated its 40th year on the air somehow out and away from the spotlight, on Amazon Prime Video. It came, just after the announcement, that Neighbours was to be ‘rested’ at the end of 2025. So that got me wondering? With the show ending its unprecedented run in a few weeks, just how popular was neighbours in its heyday alongside its British counterpart?

Neighbours began on March 18th ,1985 on Australia’s Channel 7 to decent ratings in Melbourne and Adelaide, since both were put up at 6.30pm. In Brisbane, it was slotted in a prime-time slot of 7:00pm and according to the Television.au website; was a ‘ratings hit’. However, in Sydney, the show was initially put up at 5:30pm up against Network Ten’s successful show ‘Perfect Match.’ It was then later put on at 3:30pm to low ratings, which is usual since it was on during the middle of the day, and nobody was watching it. Since Sydney was the premier city market for dramas, Channel 7 took this opportunity to cancel the show on July 12th, 1985 due to the ratings in Sydney alone, without taking the other cities in Australia into consideration. (Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide). However, not long after the show ended its run on Channel 7 in November 1985, Network Ten dutifully picked up the show and began airing the episodes it produced in January of 1986.

Over here in the UK, the BBC already had a continuing drama on their flagship channel, BBC1. EastEnders had been airing for just over a year by the time BBC1 opened its own daytime service on October 27th, 1986. The BBC saw potential in the series for a continuing drama during the day and purchased it for an inexpensive sum of money, since soaps in Australia at the time were relatively cheap imports. At the time, the only thing that was shown on daytime television on the BBC up to this point was programmes for schools and colleges, the news, programming for pre-school children, Welsh Language content (up until 1982) or the magazine programme ‘Pebble Mill at One.’ For instance, ITV were free to put on programmes during the early hours of the morning to the late-night viewers since October 1972. But the BBC avoided this due to the lack of commercial revenue that ITV had. So therefore, Neighbours made its debut in the UK in late 1986 (albeit 371 episodes behind Australia). Initially BBC1 put the show up at 1:30pm with a repeat the following morning at 10:00am. However, Michael Grade who was the controller of BBC1 was convinced by her daughter, who was at school at the time, that her and her friends kept missing Neighbours which by this point was gaining a cultural phenomenon. She claimed that she kept missing it due to her being at school and that Neighbours was on during the day. According to Brokentv.co.uk, it says:

‘Instead of going out to play at Lunchtime, Alison and her friends found a classroom containing a Television, occupy it and tune in. That is, until their scheme was rumbled and a ticking off was issued.’ Michael Grade then came into the BBC the next morning and said that the show will be moved to 5:35pm so the youth can catch it when they come home from school. That move was deemed a miracle when it was enforced in early 1988. Soon the ratings shot up to unprecedented high of 21.16 million viewers in February 1990. That alone is the aggregate viewing of both the Lunchtime airing and the early evening repeat.

On a Neighbours soap opera fandom website, it shows the varying ratings between the early afternoon episodes and the 5:35pm repeat. For the episode that aired on January 4th, 1989, the episode that aired at 1:30pm attracted a rating of 7.47 million viewers. Respectable but decent. But when it aired a few hours later at 5:35pm, it was much more received by viewers with a ratings of 11.89 million. Putting the two ratings together, the show attracted an average rating of 19.37 million viewers across both airings. The most famous episode of Neighbours, the wedding of Scott and Charlene that aired on November 8th, 1988, aired an aggregate of 19.60 million viewers.

However, EastEnders was a home-grown soap opera that the BBC devised was rating higher. In the Christmas day episode of 1986, Den Watts hands his wife Angie the divorce papers. That episode reached an aggregate high of 30.15 million viewers. Still the highest rated programme ever reached by British Television.

In contrast, EastEnders was airing in prime time tv, whilst Neighbours was airing twice a day in non-peak hours of programming. But if you want my opinion, I think EastEnders is interesting that it is showing life in the east end of London. As for Neighbours however, it portrays the lovable, all outgoing Aussie lifestyle that is bright and fun for viewers who enjoy that type of stuff. Unlike EastEnders, Neighbours has dropped most of its archive onto YouTube. Albeit with different incidental music due to copyright, everything else is worthy of dropping in from time to time.

How Soap Opera Neighbours has Outshined Eastenders