'If Amazon can't make Neighbours work, no-one can'

Yahoo

21-02-2025

When you think about it, Neighbours announcing that it was ending, before reuniting some of the soap's biggest stars like Kylie and Jason Donovan for a grand finale, and then coming back mere months later… and then getting cancelled again, is peak Neighbours behaviour.
In 2023 Amazon had swooped in for new episodes after Channel 5 axed the soap to make way for more "UK shows", but on Thursday 20 February the soap announced that there won't be any new episodes after 2025. It was axed on the same day the streamer announced it had taken full creative control of James Bond from the franchise's long-running producer Barbara Broccoli, a high profile franchise that Amazon had paid billions for. That must have given an extra sting for its cast and crew, along with the soap's fans, especially as all of this is taking place on the soap's 40th year.
The most depressing thing about Neighbour's cancellation is that if Amazon is not able to make the revival work, I am not sure anywhere else now can.
Despite Neighbours receiving praise for its storylines and for radiating a bit more positivity than other British soaps, with the majority of the show's fans being located in the UK, the streamer was essentially propping up a soap on the other side of the world.
Its most recent axing comes at a time when soaps are currently going through the motions, which makes me doubt whether any other broadcaster will pick it up. Despite an excellent set of episodes marking EastEnders' 40th Anniversary this week, it comes at a time when ITV's Coronation Street and Emmerdale are cutting the number of new hours every week, Hollyoaks has been reduced from five new episodes a week to three, and BBC daytime soap Doctors has ended altogether.
It is worth mentioning that Amazon picking up Neighbours for its ad-supported Freevee service was a surprise to everyone at the time, even though there had been a huge social media effort by fans for a broadcaster to save the soap. This was a first foray by a major streamer into the world of serialised drama.
Streaming services prefer premium limited series, which tend to cost a lot more per episode, but are more flexible, and less of a production line. While each episode of a soap is a lot cheaper to make, they also come with a lot of commitments: a permanent crew, many characters, a permanent set to maintain, along with a commitment of hundreds of episodes, regardless of the viewership.
Yet at the time, Neighbours seemed like the perfect blend. The beloved Aussie soap was used as a way to promote its fledgling ad-supported streaming service, Amazon Freevee, which had been recently rebranded from IMDBTV (honestly, an alphabet soup name of a streamer, perhaps the worst name of all time).
Yet Freevee has now been axed, with its free content now subsumed into Prime Video itself. And while Prime Video still provides free content on its platform, it just doesn't feel as much of a priority compared to its subscription shows any more.
And even though it was regularly at the top of its own most watched chart, I also wonder how many new viewers the Amazon iteration of Neighbours actually brought in. Soaps used to attract the next generation of viewers by stumbling across a plot whilst flicking through the channels, where it would become an appointment-to-view habit.
Now you have to go out of your way and scroll through menus to load up a single episode, a more complicated routine to get into the habit of. While the soap had a broadcasting partner in Australia, it was no longer shown on linear television here in the UK, and that made me wonder whether it had naturally dropped out of our cultural conversation a bit.
Still, I'll be pouring one out for Karl and Susan at this difficult time. And Bouncer the Dog and Harold too.
And if Madge comes out for the finale (again), I'll be a mess (again).
Neighbours is streaming on Prime Video. For now.