Neighbours meets 24

I haven’t seen tonight’s episode of Neighbours, so I am grateful to The Sydney Morning Herald for alerting me to a device in the episode which sounds rather intriguing:

The clock is omnipresent in tonight’s ”real-time” Neighbours episode. The gimmick of the formatting – the episode unfolds in real time over an action-packed 30 minutes on Ramsay Street – means the clock appears almost every minute to remind us of what is a pressing deadline. It’s a clever device for fans who have perhaps fallen out of touch with the folks at Erinsborough. In fact it’s almost impossible not be at least mildly interested about the future prospects of Scott McGregor and Ashleigh Brewer in the aftermath of this 24-style ep.

It’s not the first show to run an episode in real time. In fact years before 24, MASH had an episode in which a clock was present in the background of an operating theatre throughout the show.

But it could be one to catch at 6:30pm tonight on ELEVEN.