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Summer Bay gets back to basics

Ray Meagher says Home and Away will return to traditional flamin' values next year with less guns and kidnappings.

asFor the last few years there have been stalkers, gunmen, and kidnappings on Home and Away. It’s turned into the darkest little town on TV since Mt Thomas left our screens.

But next year the show promises a lighter touch, and according to veteran actor Ray Meagher, it will shift away from darker plots. He reckons it will have at least two light-hearted flamin’ moments per episode.

“We’ve had too many guns and balaclavas and bank robberies and that sort of thing,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

“We’re going back to a family show.

“We’ll still have teenage angst. What I’ve been agitating for is to have a good belly laugh or at least a nice warm smile each quarter hour in there.”

That should make life more challenging for the show’s resident cop station.

Series producer Cameron Welsh confirmed the return of a female character who moves in with Alf and Miles would add to the shift.

The move comes amid off screen stories involving actors that are as racy as some of the fictional storylines.

The show has also seen a slip in ratings since the departure of Kate Ritchie, though it remains more than competitive.

Still, it was the Summer Bay Stalker storylines that drew a lot of buzz for the show.

Source: Daily Telegraph

36 Responses

  1. I hope they stick to this promise. The show has been utterly depressing for a couple of years now and what used to be a favourite has become a real turn-off. I would like to suggest a bomb gets rid of all the dead-weight and the comedy characters can move in and start afresh.

    Remember when the crux of the show was the conflict between teens and their parents? Now half of them don’t even have parents. Where is the Fisher? For the matter, why isn’t Morag at all like Morag any more? And why won’t they make her a regular? She lifts every scene she is in.

    And remember when there actually used to be surfies and lifeguards in Summer Bay?

    Martin, Lance, Vinnie and Adam were brilliant comic characters, as were Marilyn and Narelle. More such characters please.

    (I am a fan of both Shane and Sonia but so far they have been really boring on the show)

  2. I gotta say, I’m lovin’ Sonia Todd and Shane Withington back on our screens. Hopefully they’ll become permanent cast members. They make a great couple.

  3. Wasn’t Roo Stewart only 16 when she had Martha (or maybe 17)? Justine Clarke is 13 years older than Jodi Gordon, so it’s certainly well within the realm of plausibility. As they did with Duncan Stewart, Martha’s age was altered when she returned, so all they’d need to do is alter Roo’s age to make it all work nicely. As for Conrad Coleby, he definitely isn’t old enough to have a daughter Nicole’s age, but his character was older than his actual age, so it worked (Conrad turned 30 months after he left Home and Away, so he was playing the father of someone who was actually only 12 years younger than himself).

  4. another thing…………..after alllllllll the years morag has been in the show – can they for once have her defend someone in court and have her win? 🙂

    lol for an apparent ex-judge, she has a terribly low success rate. Surely the residents must know that having her defend you in court is like the kiss of death. Same old story – big mystery / “who-dunnit”, the wrong person gets charged & jailed, morag defends & loses…..blah blah blah.

  5. I agree about the Early Years being great…but I remember an interview with Cameron Welsh saying that he wanted to bring back some mystery into the characters. Think about it when they were watching H&A when it first began… you didn’t know everything about any of the characters. Look at how they revealed Donald & Bobby! So I understood where he was trying togo. The show needs to have a Stalker or a Smuggling Ring but obviously they couldn’t keep that going another year… there’ll be another big mystery or something stunt-like during the year otherwise the show gets boring. Even with Sally there was the Rocco Stuff, so the show usually balances it out and goes through its phases like any show.

  6. Patrick, Home & away has had a few parents that didn’t seem old enough to be
    parents of teenages in recent years. There was Amanda, Roman & Jazz. I agree Justine Clarke looks too young to be Martha’s mother. But they could always recast the role, as she is tied to Tangle anyway.

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