Farewell, Ramsay Street: 10 ways Neighbours changed British culture

After almost four decades of unlikely melodrama, the final credits are to roll for UK viewers on 29 July on the TV soap opera that really did make a group of smalltown Australian families seem like “neighbours who became good friends”, to misquote the lyrics to that enduring Tony Hatch theme tune. Memories of the cul-de-sac at the centre of the action may fade but the impact of the show will live on.

Modern Oz

Erinsborough, a place dreamed up and filmed by Grundy Television at Pin Oak Court near Melbourne, was the sort of environment that audiences in grey Britain could aspire to live in: it was warm and friendly, and much more accessible than the setting of many American soaps. A seat at a table in the Waterhole, the bar at the Lassiters Complex, did.