AustraliaŐs longest running television series, Neighbours which helped launch the careers of superstars including Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce and, Margot Robbie celebrates its 30th anniversary this week. Every weeknight, viewers around the world from Brisbane to Birmingham tune in for half an hour to the misadventures, intrigues and love affairs that abound in the fictional Melbourne suburb of Erinsborough. But its influence is greatest at home: Neighbours has been an important staple of the Australian television industry for decades.
TV has always been in the business of creating fantasy and escape, and Neighbours is no different. But 30 years after its debut, itŐs become increasingly difficult to dismiss the particular kind of fantasy Neighbours is selling. In Ramsay Street, the sun is always shining, the economy is always booming and, most peculiarly, the people are always white.
Well, that last part isnŐt strictly true. But with the exception of a handful of token characters (many of whom have never lasted very long), Ramsay Street seems to exist as a sort of antithesis to an ethnically diverse modern Australia whose history has been defined by the tensions between Aboriginal land rights, multicultural migration and white supremacy.