The person who got me through 2021: Dr Karl Kennedy in Neighbours was strangely reassuring

For the past 20 years there have been a handful of constants in my life: my family, my best friend and Neighbours. Not neighbours like the people you borrow a cup of sugar from, but rather that sunshine-filled Australian soap you probably stopped watching once you left university.

When I graduated, I carried on. First, out of habit (I needed to know the fate of Toadie’s mullet), but later for its nostalgic continuity and reassurance.

As my personal life began to get busier and more complicated, this saccharine and simple soap provided me with a 30-minute retreat every weekday, where my mind could empty as familiar faces filled the screen, offering up plotlines in which the moral good always prevails and the sun always shines.

Read the feature in the Guardian.

[This piece was published on 31/01/21]