This is why I think you should watch it. Spoiler warning for the history of Neighbours, if you don't want to know, stop reading now.
Hands up if you've heard of Neighbours. I bet that's nearly all of you. Now put your hand down if you've never watched it. Those of you with your hands still up, put your hand down if you started watching it in the last fifteen years. That's probably half of you? Out of those of you left, how many of you have watched from the beginning? Welcome to the club, you are officially a Neighbours Fanatic. This post probably isn't for you but then maybe you are like me, ceaselessly searching for people who love Neighbours as much as you do.
At primary school everyone had their favourite Australian soap. You were either Team 'Borough or Team Bay (Summer Bay where Home and Away is set). I was firmly on Team 'Borough. I'd got addicted at an early age, my Mum and the other people who looked after me would plonk me in front of the lunch time showing and when the theme song played I would be transfixed. I don't remember what I thought of it when I was young (the BBC started showing it in 1986 so I would've been about four when it began over here), all I remember is never missing it.
I watched the first 170 episodes of Neighbours quite recently. I was spurred on to dig out all my old video tapes (I had friends who recorded it off of UK Gold) because of a storyline that concluded in April this year. It featured one of my favourite characters ever - Paul Robinson.
A few months later and Kim has called Scott again for help. She needs money for rent. Scott borrows the money from Paul (without telling him what it's for) and goes to see her. It is here Scott discovers that Kim is pregnant and is planning to sell her baby! Scott, being the nice lad he his realises pretty quickly that this situation is too much to handle on his own and so goes to big brother Paul for help.
Paul offers Kim money for an abortion which she soon realises she can't go through with. Finally getting Father Jim Robinson and Grandmother Helen involved, Scott and Paul convince Kim to reconcile with her parents and she goes off to live a happy life with her mother away from Erinsborough.
Fast forward thirty two years and we're on present day Ramsay Street. A young Asian man has come to Erinsborough Hospital to visit his Grandma because she knows the secret of who his Father is. David and Leo (his twin brother) have been told that their father is named Brad and that he was a doctor. Here the show runners throw in some red herrings, I'll leave them as they aren't entirely relevant to this.
Paul! It was Paul! Paul the man who was really quite nice until his first wife tried to kill him. Paul who hung out with a catholic priest and counselled a woman through her alcohol addiction. Paul who was only at university to please his father and soon jacked it in to become an airline steward. I had known Paul all my life and now the Neighbours writers were expecting me to believe that he had jumped into bed with a girl seven years his junior, then on finding out she was pregnant offered her money to get rid of it.
And now we come to the crux of the matter - my reason for saying that I think you should watch Neighbours. I forgave the writers. I forgave the writers for retconning Paul's history. To be fair, after his first wife shot him, and his second wife left him he did turn into the Paul Robinson you know and love, probably with good reason. The gif of him I used above is from the episode he came back in 2004 in which he murders someone and sets fire to Lassiters.
You should watch Neighbours because the people who work on it - the actors, the writers, the directors - love it as much as I do, as much as you would if you gave it a chance. It's silly but covers real issues. It constantly goes over the top but there's always a good reason for it. It's a bright spark on the darkest day that says "You think your life is bad? Watch this!"