Home and Away

Home and Away (H&A) is an Australian television soap opera. It was created by Alan Bateman and commenced broadcast on the Seven Network on 17 January 1988. Bateman came up with the concept of the show during a trip to Kangaroo Point, New South Wales, where he noticed locals were complaining about the construction of a foster home and against the idea of foster children from the city living in the area. The soap opera was initially going to be called Refuge, but the name was changed to the "friendlier" title of Home and Away once production began. The show premiered in what Bateman classified as a ninety-minute telefeature, as opposed to a pilot. Since then, each subsequent episode has aired for a duration of twenty-two minutes. Home and Away has become the second longest-running drama series in Australian television, after Neighbours. In Australia, it is currently broadcast from Mondays to Thursdays at 7:00 pm. Home and Away follows the lives and loves of the residents in Summer Bay, a fictional seaside town in New South Wales. The series initially focused on the Fletcher family – Tom (Roger Oakley) and Pippa (Vanessa Downing), and their five foster children, Frank Morgan (Alex Papps), Carly Morris (Sharyn Hodgson), Lynn Davenport (Helena Bozich), Steven Matheson (Adam Willits) and Sally Fletcher (Kate Ritchie) – who moved from the city into the Summer Bay House, where they assumed the new job of running the caravan park, and eventually took in a sixth foster child, Bobby Simpson (Nicolle Dickson). Home and Away was not without controversy. During the first season alone, it featured several adult-themed storylines such as teen pregnancy, rape, drug and alcohol addiction, drug overdose and attempted suicide. The series has dealt with similar storylines over the years which have often exceeded its restricted time slot. Palm Beach in Sydney's Northern Beaches district has been used as the location for Summer Bay since 1988. The exterior scenes are filmed mainly at Palm Beach, while the interior scenes are filmed at the Australian Technology Park in Redfern. Home and Away has been sold to over 140 countries around the world, making it one of Australia's most successful media exports. In the UK, it and fellow Australian soap opera Neighbours have been the most popular of the genre that are filmed internationally; Home and Away is broadcast on 5Star, which also previously aired Neighbours until it was initially cancelled in 2022 after the network declined to renew its contract for the programme (it was later revived by Amazon Freevee, in cooperation with domestic broadcaster Network 10). It is one of the highest-rating shows on RTÉ Television in Ireland (the same episode being shown twice per day: first in the early afternoon on RTÉ 1 and second in the early evening on RTÉ 2), and TVNZ 2 in New Zealand. In Australia, Home and Away is the most awarded program at the Logie Awards, with a total of 51 wins, including Most Popular Drama Program. Some cast members have won several other awards such as the Gold Logie for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television, Silver Logie for Most Popular Actor, and Most Popular Actress. In 2015, Home and Away was inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame.

Plot from Home and AwayCC BY-SA 4.0