Kylie and Jason, Natalie Imbruglia and Holly Valance, Guy Pearce and his leather jacket – Neighbours may be coming to an end because of declining audiences in the UK, but goodness it goes out with an all-star bang.
The Australian soap never had quite the cachet in Ireland as in Britain. (Here, Home and Away was the Aussie teatime watch of choice.) Yet for sheer A-lister pizzazz, the finale – airing on the UK’s Channel 5 – nonetheless claims all the bragging rights.
It is, in fact, two finales in one. In one universe, the regular show winds down with the residents of Ramsay Street having decided they’re moving out en masse (before changing their minds at the final moment). And then there is the interstellar sign-off, in which the many, many future A-listers who cut their teeth on Neighbours pop around to say hello. And then goodbye.
It is rather a crew. Margot Robbie manifests via video message to say Neighbours was one of the happiest times of her life. In theory, she is playing her character, Donna – but Robbie, in an expensive hotel somewhere, kicks down the fourth wall and speaks from the heart about her love for the series.
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There’s also a weird cutaway to Imbruglia and Valance, whose characters bump into one another while perusing the Ramsay Street Facebook page. What are the odds?
But the celebrity heart of the episode is a three-hander between Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, all of whom were in Ramsay Street together in the late 1980s. Kylie and Jason, as the evergreen lovebirds Charlene and Scott, are slightly blink and they’re gone.
They arrive in a green Mini to the strains of Especially for You — that fourth wall is pretty wobbly even before Robbie knocks it over — and then run about taking in the sights, all while Kylie seems to go out of her way to deliver as little dialogue as possible.
Pearce goes all in, however. His character, Mike, is back, in a leather jacket, hair slicked back, to reconnect with his old flame “Plain Jane”. Neighbours evidently has a special place in Pearce’s heart: he commits entirely to the part and never acts as if he’s slumming it or doing Ramsay Street a favour.
The curtain comes down with Mike and Jane reunited, and Scott and Charlene clinking champagne flutes. And even if you couldn’t tell Ramsay Street from Gordon Ramsay — I’m sure a lot of Irish people fall into that category — it’s hard not to feel a pinprick of emotion as the theme tune comes in and Australia’s greatest contribution to soap opera fades to black.
