Two years will have passed in Erinsborough when Neighbours returns next month, it has been confirmed.
The soap ended its 37-year broadcast run last summer after Channel 5 withdrew its funding, but Amazon subsequently came to the show's rescue and it will be back on screens - via the Freevee streaming service - in a matter of weeks.
Although just over a year has passed since the last episode, exec producer Jason Herbison has revealed that viewers will rejoin the residents of Ramsay Street two years down the line.
"That was decided very early on, when we were having talks with Amazon," he told press at a recent junket. "We knew there was going to be a transmission gap, so life for the audience would have gone on and time would have passed for them too.
"It just felt like a one-off opportunity. In serial dramas, there aren't a lot of things you can do for the first time. Of course, other soaps have done time jumps, but in our case, we were actually going to have been off air as well.
"We felt that it was a great opportunity – and two years felt like a really nice timeline."
New episodes of Neighbours will stream every Monday to Thursday on Freevee from September 18 in the UK and US, and via Prime Video in Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.
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