Love it love it love it (Home and Away)

Member Name: aylawarner

Product:	Home and Away
Date:	02/04/09 (44 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great acting, real life story lines, fun to watch

Disadvantages: Too many tragedies

OK now I know that a lot of people are under the impression that Australian TV soaps are all cheesy and have bad acting, and if you watched Neighbours then you'd be right, but Home and Away is a completely different kettle of fish. The actors in it can actually, shock horror, act. They are all really brilliant actors - every time someone cries I cry, when someone laughs I laugh and surely this is the point of acting - to get you to feel the emotions to - not just to sit in front of a TV screen watching fake performances that have no effect on you?

Admittedly (and I cringe as I tell you this), I used to watch all the English soaps. But over the years they have just got worse and worse until the story lines are completely unbelievable and the actors are just pure rubbish now. I cannot watch them anymore. The only one that I still watch, without fail every day, is Home and Away.

Home and Away has been running since 1987 and is one of the longest running Australian TV series. It has been running alongside Neighbours since it started, which the Seven Network axed due to poor ratings, and instead created the more popular soap of Home of Away.

The show began with the main characters of Pippa and Tom Fletcher who ran the Summer Bay Caravan Park along with a succession of foster children, the most well-known of who was their adopted daughter, Sally Fletcher (Kate Ritchie), who only recently left the show last year.

Today, the caravan park is still up and running, managed by Sally's brother. There are still some well-known faces in the show from the beginning including Alf Stewart (Ray Meagher), Colleen Stewart (Lyn Collingwood) and Irene Roberts (Lynne McGranger). It has also starred and brought to life some now famous Hollywood actors including Isla Fisher (Confessions of a Shopaholic), Simon Baker (The Mentalist) , Heath Ledger, Dannii Minogue and Guy Pearce.

The only thing I find slightly annoying about the show is that it is just full of one tragedy after another. There is always something going wrong and as soon as someone starts smiling another thing will just come along and knock them back down again. For example, Martha Holden (Jodi Gordon) married the love of her life a few years ago. After a few months they were divorced and then a whole tangle of bad things happened to her including being kidnapped, having an abortion, being arrested for the possession of drugs, being conned by her boyfriend, and the list goes on. Eventually, she found her way back into the arms of her ex-husband only to re-marry him and have their wedding day venue blow up in flames, then get cancer and have a miscarriage, and then, when she finally overcomes the cancer and you think everything's worked out well, her husband goes and gets shot. And all this before she's even reached her mid-20s! I think Summer Bay must be cursed!

Home and Away is filled with a mixture of love and friendship, and hate and deceit and always has something going on. It's such a great programme that they've previously won 34 Australian Logie Awards and they've been nominated for 7 awards this year including Most Popular Drama.

The show is set in Summer Bay and is filmed by the Seven Network in various locations in Sydney. You can see the show being filmed in some locations such as Palm Beach, Sydney, where I visited last year and you can see the main (and beautiful) beach from the show as well as Alf's Surf Club. If you like Home and Away then this is definitely worth a visit on a trip to Sydney. You can get in touch with the Seven Network and they will tell you when they are filming there. I met the characters of Jack and Tony Holden (both VERY good looking!), Rachel Armstrong, Kirsty Sullivan, Ruby Buckton, Roman Harris, Geoff Campbell (who I got to hug right after he came out of the surf!), Rick Dalby and Jai Fernandez. It's great watching them actually doing the scenes and then watching them on TV when you get back is weird and I kept thinking to myself I was standing right there!

Home and Away is definitely a great show to watch if you like these sorts of things and it's by far the best one that has been produced in Australia.

It's shown every weeknight on Channel 5 at 6 pm and you can get a first look at the next's day's episode straight after at 6.30 pm on Fiver (freeview 36). If you miss any the omnibus is on at 12 pm on Saturdays or you can catch up on Demand 5 on www.five.tv.

Summary: The best Australian series