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Escape from Ramsay Street

May 27 2002

Neighbours comes to town: cast and crew wait for the sun to come out in Sydney.

When Neighbours came to town to shoot this week's Sydney storyline, Sacha Molitorisz was there.

'I'm still trying to sort out how I'm going to shoot this f---er," says Gary Conway. Luckily the man with the trigger-happy glint in his eye is a television director, not a policeman.

In Sydney to film a handful of scenes for Neighbours, Conway is standing beside the Opera House. It's mid-afternoon and if he's impressed by Utzon's masterpiece, he's not letting on. His eyes are glued to the north-east, where thick, dark clouds are convening.

"The whole point was to involve Sydney and to show the sunshine," Conway says, agitated. "And all we've had is rain and hail and squalls. So we threw out the schedule first thing yesterday and thought, 'Right, what can we do now?' In a way it's fun, I guess. It keeps you on the ball."

As a light shower causes him to squint, Conway surveys the choppy harbour. He has to shoot a storyline set on a water taxi. If there is to be a deluge, he wants his water-borne scenes in the can first.

Only three of the show's stars have made the trip to Sydney. One is Holly Valance, who plays Felicity. Felicity is fleeing to Sydney in the arms of Marc, played by David Karakai. Their liaison is a major scandal, so Stuart - who, of course, also has feelings for Felicity - has followed and hopes to persuade the pair to return home. Stuart is played by Blair McDonough, whose only previous acting experience was as one of the housemates on Big Brother.

"I wasn't acting when I was in the house," says McDonough. "Just minding my Ps and Qs and having some manners. That was more of a mind game, a test of character. Now I'm here and I love what I'm doing. This is what I want to do."

In McDonough's words, he was simply thrown into the deep end on Neighbours. "I had a briefing on what they wanted and they said, 'Just be yourself and it'll happen.' And I was myself, and it is just happening. Neighbours is a bit of a building ground, it's not there [so you can] extend yourself and master the craft. It's good for learning the basics."

McDonough, who started working on the soap last August, doesn't appear in the water-taxi scene. Instead Valance and Karakai hop aboard, followed by Conway and his cameraman. Within 20 minutes, their work is done: the vexed lovers have been shot against the backdrop of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Then it's off to the next location.

The Neighbours schedule is relentless. "We started at half past five this morning," says Conway. "We can't go terribly late. We'd be on overtime by a quarter to five, and they won't cop too much overtime."

The team produces the show at a rate of one episode a day, five days a week. There are just four weeks' hiatus annually, which means on most working days there'll be one crew shooting in the studio and another on location. Each episode is taped roughly three months before it airs.

It's a given, then, that the production values are sometimes, well, compromised, and that the acting is occasionally, um, raw. But that hasn't stopped Neighbours becoming one of the world's most celebrated, long-lasting soaps. Two weeks ago, episode 4000 aired in Australia. While it rates well here, it's success overseas is astonishing.

"Overseas is just phenomenal," says Conway. "Grundy's is claiming we're getting 16 million viewers a day in Great Britain and over 100 million worldwide. That's in over 60 countries and 20 languages."

When Valance visits England she is mobbed by fans and photographers. "I've had guys with cameras outside my car," says the former model, who joined the cast nearly three years ago. "It's hilarious, but I can see it would be frustrating if you got that all the time. Over here, thank God, they don't really care about us that much," she laughs.

"Television isn't so much a part of Australians' lives. In England they can't go outside for eight months of the year. So what else are they going to do?"

Despite the pace, McDonough and Valance say they enjoy making Neighbours. "We're all mates," Valance says. "There are no dramas or bulls---. It's pretty cruisy. And even though it's hectic, everyone's very casual with each other. Everyone has been there for so long now, both the cast and crew, we are like a big family. It's another world - the way we talk with each other and the jokes and the swearing."

If Conway is swearing now about the rain and the wind, he's doing it under his breath. In any case, the inclement weather has its advantages. "Yesterday we did some stuff on a deserted beach, where they were sitting just watching the surfers," he says. "And for Felicity's state of mind that's better, because she's meant to be depressed. It's more dramatic."

Felicity, Marc and Stuart's Sydney sojourn begins on Tuesday, 6.30pm on Ten.


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