Neighbours might have come to an end last year after four decades, but fans of the Australian series will be thrilled to learn that the soap has found a new home here in the UK.
Throughout its 40-year history, the long-running TV series was a huge hit in Britain as well as down under. Neighbours initially aired on BBC in 1986, where it remained until moving to Channel 5 in 2008.
But all good things must come to an end, and viewers said goodbye to the fictional Melbourne suburb of Erinsborough for the first time in July 2022. Neighbours was then purchased by Amazon Freevee, who brought the series back in 2023, only for it to be cancelled again in 2025.
On Wednesday (6 May), UK channel UKTV announced that the show had found a new home, as the first two years of classic episodes of Neighbours would be airing on U&Drama this summer.
A whopping 420 episodes will air as part of a “landmark deal” between UKTV and producer Fremantle, with the episodes also streaming on U.
Nostalgia-obsessed fans – or those who remember tuning in the first time around – will be thrilled to see the original episodes airing chronologically on UK television for the first time in decades.
And while not quite the promise of new episodes of the show, the announcement offers a glimmer of hope clamouring for Neighbours to be revived once more, after the end of the Amazon era was announced with news that the show would be “resting”.
If nothing else, it shows that Fremantle still see value in the Neighbours IP on an international scale.
“It’s a good start… now we just need somebody to bite the bullet and commission a new series!” read one fan’s comment.
Given the show had already been cancelled and revived once before, it’s no wonder that the second cancellation hit fans hard.
This final iteration also was one of Amazon’s most watched shows and received two Daytime Emmy nominations, but was pulled with the end of Amazon Freevee.
Executive producer Jason Herbison explained in March 2025: “We were considered a very big success on Amazon Freevee, and we’re so grateful to them for this chapter and this two and a half years.
“While we seem to be very successful on Prime we’re just simply not part of their content strategy going forward. And there’s really no hard feelings with that. Things change and as I say, we’re just very grateful to them to have had this chapter.”