After 37 years on the air, Neighbours celebrated its happy ending last week, and viewers were moved to tears as Ramsay Street’s characters gave us one more show.
The final episode of the soap featured a tribute to the 37 years of love from fans, which attracted a record-breaking 3 million viewers in the UK.
While Toadie (Ryan Moloney) married Melanie Pearson, Mike Young (Guy Pearce) and Jane Harris (Annie Jones) took a literal walk down memory lane to renew their romance (Lucinda Cowden).
Meanwhile, Terese Willis (Rebekah Elmaloglou) and Paul Robinson (Stefan Dennis) reconnected, and Margot Robbie and Natalie Imbruglia made surprise appearances to reprise their roles as Donna Freedman and Beth Brennan, respectively.
Fans, however, were quick to point out that the Australian Network 10 broadcast of the hour-long finale differed slightly from the one that aired on Channel 5 in the United Kingdom.
The UK broadcast omitted a number of significant moments, including one crucial scene in which Karl Kennedy (Alan Fletcher) told Toadie that he and Susan treated him like a son (Jackie Woodburne).
The very concept of this is causing us to cry.
In addition, Stephanie McIntosh reprised her role as Sky Mangel for a special video greeting for Toadie and Melanie on their wedding day that was seen by Australian viewers.
The UK audience was not shown this.
Fans had hoped to watch Beth Brennan (Natalie Imbruglia) greet Ned Willis (Ben Hall), but Channel 5 viewers were denied the chance to witness this exchange.
The final shot, in which the soap thanked viewers for their support, showed both the cast and the crew in Australia, whereas our version only featured cast members. The end credits, which included a mighty megamix of various Neighbours theme tunes over the years, were also significantly cut in the UK broadcast.
The executive producer of Neighbours, Jason Herbison, commented on the confusion, telling Digital Spy that it wasn’t because Channel 5 shortened the ending but rather because Australian broadcaster Network 10 needed an additional minute of material.
The conclusion was always planned to be an hour-long special, he added. However, we unexpectedly found ourselves with more screen time when Network 10 decided to air 90-minute programmes in the last week.
“It opened up almost a minute of time after combining the second-to-last episode with the finale and dropping an extra set of credits and summary.”
We hastily inserted several extra scenes, such Karl’s extended monologue and Beth kissing Ned.
‘As you can imagine, there was a lot of material left on the floor with so much story going on. The video messages and additional unseen footage from the previous programme probably total another 15 minutes.
Neighbours: You can watch The Finale online at My5.
