Home and Away star Samara Weaving looks completely unrecognisable in her new film Babylon

Table of Content

• Home and Away spoilers: Ziggy Astoni clashes with boyfriend Dean over the pregnancy...
• Present characters
• 'Home and Away' Penny McNamee and Ditch Davey on ‘emotional’ wedding scenes
• From zero-COVID to confusion: China struggles to live with the virus
• Home and Away’s Jacqui Purvis reveals SHOCK new start for Flick!
• Sharon Osbourne health update after medical emergency sees star hospitalised

During the show's first season in 1988, a rape storyline for the character Carly Morris outraged the public and a protest erupted, as viewers deemed it an inappropriate subject to be covering in an early evening time slot. At the end of the first episode, Tom and Pippa take in their sixth foster child Bobby Simpson . They were replaced by a large photo collage showing various locations around Summer Bay. The decision to remove the cast and shorten the titles was due to time restrictions.

On 31 March 2022, two episodes achieved new series lows of 382,000 and 364,000 viewers respectively. In 2019, Home and Away returned at the later date of 18 February, after the summer series of cricket concluded. Pippa Doyle of 96FM reported that declining ratings in 2018 and Seven's decision to push the show back had created doubt about its future on the network, and whether or not a timeslot change or a move to a multichannel was likely.

Home and Away spoilers: Ziggy Astoni clashes with boyfriend Dean over the pregnancy...

A 2010 episode which featured Martha McKenzie engaging in a sexual scene with Liam Murphy on a kitchen table was deemed "too raunchy" by a television watchdog in New Zealand, where, at the time, the series was aired in a G-rated timeslot. While Home and Away features a mix of young cast members and older, more experienced actors, the show has always had a definite youth focus, with the younger characters dominating much of the storylines. Many of the cast have spent several years on Home and Away, including original cast member Judy Nunn who left the series in 2000 after 12 years playing the co-owner of Summer Bay's diner. Other original cast members Norman Coburn played high school principal Donald Fisher until 2003, and Kate Ritchie departed in 2008 after 20 years playing Sally Fletcher. Both Coburn and Ritchie along with Ray Meagher entered the 2002 Guinness World Records as the longest-serving actors in an Australian drama series.

On 19 July 2021, Home and Away was forced to postpone scheduled filming due to new COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in Sydney. The show was already on a two-week production break, which was then extended. In early August, a spokesperson for the show confirmed filming had resumed. This equates to 46 weeks' worth of Summer Bay drama, if the show airs in a five-episodes-per-week scheduling pattern. Details of the Australian season finale and end-of-year break on Channel 7 are yet to be revealed.

Present characters

The 2021 season has seen an increase in ratings with most episodes attracting over 600,000. June saw a rise in viewers when the month peaked at 650,000 for episode which aired on 22 June, while in July, the show continues to receive steady ratings, and again saw a further rise in ratings with 657,000 viewers tuning in on 7 July. The 2021 Olympic return episode, which aired on 9 August 2021, attracted the highest rating in over two years, with 710,000 viewers, with an even higher increase of 733,000 viewers tuning in on 10 August.

Home and Away follows the lives and loves of the residents in Summer Bay, a fictional seaside town in New South Wales. 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.

'Home and Away' Penny McNamee and Ditch Davey on ‘emotional’ wedding scenes

It was the most watched program of 2014 on the RTÉ Player with over four million viewers. As of 2014, the show is available to view in Northern Ireland on 5STAR daily at 3.30pm and 6.30pm as well as the regular Channel Five airings. The show is however blocked in Northern Ireland via the SKY platform on both RTE1 and RTE2, yet it remains available on Irish platform Saorview for both Irish and Northern Irish viewers. The geo block has been lifted on the Sky platform in Northern Ireland and all airings are available to view. Home and Away is consistently RTÉ's most-watched soap opera, and in 2021, the series was streamed by 4.9 million viewers.

Meagher now holds that record alone and he is the only remaining original cast member in the show. Meagher along with Lynne McGranger , Ada Nicodemou (Leah Patterson-Baker) and Emily Symons are the longest-serving cast members currently in Home and Away. In 2010, Georgie Parker joined the cast of Home and Away as Alf's daughter Roo Stewart, originally played by Justine Clarke in 1988–89. There have been nine different versions of the theme song used throughout the years. The lyrics remained the same since the show's inception, but a number of verses were gradually cut back over the years due to time restrictions. The original version was sung by Karen Boddington and Mark Williams, and was used from 1988 until mid-1995.

Home and Away star Samara Weaving looks completely unrecognisable in her new film Babylon

From 2013 until 2017, Home and Away used a series of five-second opening titles, which changed every week. The various titles mostly featured scenes of bikini-clad women and shirtless men with surfboards at the beach. In 2018, a new series of eight-second titles were introduced along with the return of the show's theme song. The new titles, which currently change during each week, mostly feature two men or two women running down to the ocean for a surf. A 30-second version of the titles, not aired on Australian television, was released on the Home and Away website.

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. The triple bill episodes continued to receive low ratings until the Thursday, 9 May episodes, which improved with 617,000 viewers. The following week's triple bill saw a further rise with 627,000 viewers, while the episodes broadcast on 30 May received 638,000 viewers and ranked at 7th place for the evening. The 2020 season return saw a series low for a premiere with only 548,000 tuning in.

This was also the case last year, when the final Channel 5 episode of the year featured the gas poisoning incident at Salt. On Sunday, eastern Zhejiang province — a major economic hub home to more than 60 million people — said those with mild symptoms could “continue to work, if need be, on the prerequisite of taking personal protections”. People with COVID-19 symptoms in one of China’s largest cities can now go to work “as normal”, state media reported Monday, a dramatic reversal in a country where a single case could previously send thousands into lockdown. This mini greenhouse will capture water as it evaporates and drip it back into the plant. Fill up your sink or bathtub with a few inches of water and lay a towel inside to protect against scratches. Rest your potted plants in the sink and leave them there while you're gone.

Channel 5 bosses appear to have worked closely with the Home and Away team in Australia, as the final UK episode of the year ends on a dramatic cliffhanger. They were joined in the third episode by Alf Stewart's rebellious daughter Roo Stewart and within the first month by his sister Celia Stewart , who portrayed a similar busybody role to what Gwen Plumb played in the pilot. Debra Lawrance replaced Vanessa Downing as Pippa Fletcher in 1990, but to this day, the show continues to use both actresses' likeness in flashbacks and photographs throughout the series, possibly the only television serial to do so.

The tactic emulates the way Channel 5 previously worked with Neighbours before the days of same-day broadcasts. Neighbours fans were often treated to a big end-of-year cliffhanger for UK viewers, regardless of the transmission gap with Australia. In the United States, Home and Away was first shown briefly on the FX cable network from the channel's launch on 1 June 1994 to February 1995. Over two decades later, the show began streaming on the subscription service Hulu on 2 March 2015, beginning with the 2015 season. The service no longer receives new episodes, although the complete twenty-eighth season is currently available. On 22 March 2020, Home and Away suspended production over the COVID-19 pandemic.

The season returned to a series low of 620,000 viewers and ranked 13th for the night. The following night, the viewing figure fell to 581,000 and the show ranked 10th for the night. The first triple bill on 21 February pulled in 577,000 viewers and ranked 8th for the evening. The ratings for the triple bill episodes continued to fall from 524,000 to 414,000 viewers, and on 28 March 2019, the triple bill pulled in a series low of 383,000 viewers and ranked 14th for the night. April 2019 saw a slight rise in the viewing figures; the first episode of the month drew in 740,000 viewers and ranked 9th for that night. Since 2000, Home and Away has ceased broadcast mid-season for two weeks during the Olympic Games and the episode to screen prior to this is referred to as an 'Olympic cliffhanger'.