Would you like more 'normal' storylines?

[Brian]

H&A is not known for there 'normal storylines' and is part of the reason why it does so much better than things like Neighbours in the ratings.

Which ratings are you referring to? In the Sunday Times Culture supplement, they give the top 10 TV programme for all channels. Neighbours comes 6th in Channel 5 with 1.7 million viers, Home and Away does not appear there.

[Brian]

I don't think it is a case wanting a 'normal' situation being in the show or not, because single parent families and living together couples are a reality of life. But a Family unit in the show can put a 'base' in the show that storylines can bounce in and out of. You have the dynamics of the Family being played out amongst those particular characters, and at the same time there can be storylines with the Dad and the other males in the show happening at times, or the Mum and the other females in the show, the kids and the other young characters in the show.

A Family unit in the show can just make for a good base for storylines to float around in, but just as importantly float in and out of amongst the other characters in the show also.

Thanks for that. Exactly the point that I was making in my post yesterday in the General Discussion section.

And thanks Amy for making this a separate topic. It will be interesting to hear other views.

[Miranda]

I really don't mind that there isn't a family in HAA. I like it because its escapism, you can watch it and just forget about real life, but its not so weird that you can't relate to it. I think its a bit unrealistic that there are so few parents in it, just lots of teenagers floating about with no families, but its just a soap, not a serious drama.

[.Amy.]

H&A is not known for there 'normal storylines' and is part of the reason why it does so much better than things like Neighbours in the ratings.

Which ratings are you referring to? In the Sunday Times Culture supplement, they give the top 10 TV programme for all channels. Neighbours comes 6th in Channel 5 with 1.7 million viers, Home and Away does not appear there.

In this thread, most of the time Neighbours doesn't feature but when it does it's always below Home and Away.

[DinerLandlord]

I don't mind that there isn't a "normal" family in the show, but it would be a bit more realistic to at least have one stereotypical family with two parents and two or three kids.

Belle has chosen to have nothing to do with her adoptive parents, never met her biological father, and her biological mother has left her to be with Peter.

Xavier and Ruby are both being raised by their older siblings Charlie and Hugo, who are both only in their mid-20's.

Geoff and Annie are orphans, as is Jai. Annie is in fact legally supposed to be the ward of Michael Abraham, not Irene.

Melody doesn't want anything to do with her crazy mother

until now

, and her father seems to have abandoned her.

Aden's mother is dead and he doesn't want anything to do with his father.

Poor VJ isn't allowed to see his father, and his step-father is dead.

I think it's just one or two too many young characters with no traditional family. Surely it isn't that difficult to write storylines for a "normal" family unit. I know the whole basis of Home and Away has always been the fostering of troubled or needy young kids since the very beginning, but two of the most interesting families in the show's history were "normal" families consisting of two parents and some kids - the Nash's and the Sutherland's. It's been done before, I'm sure they can do it again.

I can't help feeling that some of the parents or guardians are kept significantly younger than the parents of most teenagers, so they can be considered "hot", and be involved in romantic storylines them selves. Just look at Miles, Roman, Jazz, Natalie, Peter, Charlie, Hugo, Dan, and Amanda. Do any of them look old enough to have a teenage child, or to be raising one on behalf of someone else?

Even Sally was extremely young to be a foster parent to Ric and Cassie. She was 28 when Ric turned 20! Although she always seemed like an old soul.

[Oipoodle]

I'd like to see a family, at the mo the cast feels a bit disconnected. It breeds good storylines and adds more anguish when there is a dramatic situation if one of the people in jeopardy is related and they have people who love them searching for them. I always felt like Irene/will/ Hayley and Nic where a family even though Irene wasn't their real mum because of the writing and acting but they haven't done as much with Belle/Annie and Geoff and you rarely see Annie and Geoff as a brother and sister anymore.

I agree Dinerlandlord bring Archie to the Bay!

[Mrs Bishop]

Home and Away started with a family comeing from the city to summer bay a couple who took in foster kids and that is the basis to wich I relate to you had Dad Tom Fletcher Mom Pippa and there brood of foster kids of witch story lines came off with Sally and Milco Shannon turning gay Brodie with a violent mom being taken i by the Fletchers, thats what is needed a base in sted of disconected people.

[-Kevin-]

H&A is not known for there 'normal storylines' and is part of the reason why it does so much better than things like Neighbours in the ratings.

Which ratings are you referring to? In the Sunday Times Culture supplement, they give the top 10 TV programme for all channels. Neighbours comes 6th in Channel 5 with 1.7 million viers, Home and Away does not appear there.

Yes the UK maybe but in Australia H&A trashes Neighbours by miles!! Neighbours arent even in the same league as Home and away!!

[Red Ranger 1]

One of the key themes of Home and Away is(or at least should be)the presence of unconventional family units, that just because a group of people aren't related that doesn't stop them being a family. The problem is that recently even those families seem to exist in name only.As someone pointed out, Irene, Belle, Geoff and Annie live together but it's rare to see two or three of them, let alone all four, in the same scene.Miles, Kirsty, Jai and Melody were meant to be a family but I'm struggling to remember ever seeing the four of them together.Aden seemed to spend most of last year with Belle rather than surrogate family Roman and Nicole(who don't spend much time with each other), while Ruby just got lumped in with the other teenagers instead of being seen with her family or even Leah who she's meant to live with.(By the way, while Charlie and Hugo are obviously two young to be parents to Ruby and Xavier, conversely they seem too old to be their siblings:There seems to be a 10-15 year age gap when you'd expect them to be Geoff's age.Similarly, Ross and to an extent Gina seem a bit old to have teenage children.)The days of Tom and Pippa surrounded by a crowd of foster children seem a distant memory.

I think one of the problems is this episode limit that seems to have been imposed on all the characters. I don't know when it came into force but it really became obvious to me last year when they were refusing to have the Kirsty/Kane and Melody/Axel plotlines in the same episode, meaning Geoff and Annie were going through some pretty major stuff with Irene nowhere in sight.It's left the cast split into groups of two or three that never seem to interact.

As for high concept storylines, I think I'm getting old because it's got to the stage where they bore me. I think it was one of the actors on Coronation Street who said the best drama is two people in a room talking;when you get into things blowing up, it ceases to be about the people involved.Setting a building on fire might look good on the trailers but when they all walk out out of it in the next episode and everyone's back to normal the next week, what's the point?Same for having one of your lead characters try to kill his father and everyone acting as though it didn't happen.And don't even get me started on the development nonsense, one of the worst pieces of plotting I've ever seen which simultaneously tried to convince us the problem had been around for years and it was all the fault of some people who'd just arrived.

(By the way, Neighbours can hardly claim victory on the nuclear family front:It's largely composed of single parents and for much of recent history the Kennedys were the only married couple-and even they split up at one point.They're now up to two, at least at UK pace.)

[Ryan]

Red Ranger, I think it's been in force for the best part of this decade, but even picking most years throughout the shows history, you can see that most people only got 3 episodes. Where the show now differs, as you say, is that there doesn't seem to be any flexibility to it.

Some of the first episodes I ever put on tape, around the time Jude had his bike accident, Seb was coming to terms with the Fisher was his grandfather and all that stuff, he appeared in nearly 15 episodes. Jude recovered and things settled down with Fisher and so they dropped the numbers of episodes he was in. There's also the Sophie in 75 straight episodes story as well, though I'm not sure on the verifilabilty on it.

It's strange though. For no apparent reason towards the end of 2007, Ric and Matilda appeared in 5 episodes in the one week. They never dominated any particular episode, but they were there for Cassie, Lucas etc. I just don't understand and if it were an interview with Bevan about the show, I would have asked something along the lines of why it has been introduced. Actually, I can see why it's been introduced, but why with such inflexibilty. I'm sure reading one of alexx's posts somewhere that Neighbours had stopped doing it. I've always compared it to some sort of painting by numbers that were big in the nineties.