As the end of the very long road draws nearer for the iconic soap opera Neighbours, the return of Scott and Charlene to Erinsborough, or rather Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, was always going to provide a suitably seminal moment to bid farewell to a show that has lasted an epic 37 years.

The suburban dream: Scott (Jason Donovan) and Charlene (Kylie Minogue) are returning to Ramsay Street.Credit:Network 10

Reg Watson, the creator of Neighbours.Credit:ATV Network

But there’s another lesser-known name entrenched on Ramsay Street that deserves equal, if not greater, recognition: that of the show’s original creator, Reg Watson, a shy Australian who was once described as the “godfather” of the modern television soap opera, a writer with a knack for elevating the minutia of suburbia into must-watch drama five nights a week.

That was the gift the late Watson bestowed on audiences around the world for half a century when he came up with the concept for Neighbours and pitched it to his boss, another television icon, the late Reg Grundy.

Watson, who lived quietly with his partner in the northern beaches and hated publicity, died in 2019 aged 93.

Apart from a brief – and albeit COVID-delayed – appearance in this year’s Logies In Memoriam segment, his departure from this mortal coil barely caused a ripple in the greater consciousness of television watchers, but anyone who watched soaps for the past 50 years will know Watson’s work well.

“The hysteria around these hot young stars was unimaginable, we would go to shopping centres with them, and it was like Beatlemania.”

Or as fellow television creator Bevan Lee told me this week: “He is a f—ing pioneer of Australian television and barely anyone has ever heard of him. He really does deserve to be remembered, without him Neighbours simply would not have existed.”

Watson was Lee’s mentor in the 1970s when Lee scored a job as a “trainee” writer working on The Restless Years.

“He had an ability to see drama in the ordinary. That was his overriding philosophy for Neighbours, which at the time was against the grain of television soaps that were so melodramatic and over the top. He elevated suburban life to drama that captivated millions.”

Reg Grundy understood how to use publicity to grow an audience.Credit:Ben Rushton

Born in Queensland in 1926, after a brief career as an actor Watson became a television executive in the UK in the 1950s, working for the broadcaster ATV.

During his tenure there Watson oversaw the creation of one of Britain’s most iconic soap operas, the Midlands-set Crossroads.

Returning to Australia, Watson became head of drama at Reg Grundy Productions and oversaw the company’s prolific drama slate, including The Young Doctors (1976-1983), Glenview High (1977), The Restless Years (1977-1981), Prisoner (1979-1986), Sons and Daughters (1981-1987) and Neighbours (1985-present). He also oversaw the US adaptation of Prisoner: Dangerous Women.

Neighbours’ original producer John Holmes remembered an unassuming man who had no interest in the “glitter and glamour” of showbiz, but fundamentally understood audiences “wanted to identify with the characters they were watching, that’s why Neighbours was such a success, people related to what they were seeing.”

Watson retired in the early 1990s and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for services to media in 2010.

Rivals Patricia (Rowena Wallace) and Beryl (Leila Hayes) in Reg Watson’s Sons & Daughters.Credit:Fremantle Media

But it was largely his creative output that helped his boss Reg Grundy become a multi-millionaire, selling his empire for $400 million, a huge jump on the days when the BBC reportedly paying £25,000 per episode for the show in the mid-1980s.

It had already been a precarious start for the show in its homeland. Neighbours had initially been commissioned by the Seven Network, but the broadcaster, which had reportedly paid $7 million for the first season, dropped it when it failed to deliver the numbers it was used to with similar successes from A Country Practice, and one of Watson’s other hits, Sons and Daughters.

“I remember Reg calling me up when Seven axed Neighbours and telling me not to let any of the cast sign new contracts,” Holmes recalled. “He was confident a new network would pick it up.”

Former Ramsay Street resident Delta Goodrem.Credit:Getty

And so they did, with Ten securing Neighbours, and overseeing the arrival of Minogue into the cast, which over the years has also counted such international luminaries as Russell Crowe, Natalie Imbruglia, Liam Hemsworth, Margot Robbie, Natalie Bassingthwaighte, Delta Goodrem and Guy Pearce.

Ten’s publicity director at the time Brian Walsh, now running Foxtel, knew he had to make a bang to get people talking about Neighbours, which was off to a slow start on Ten.

“Reg was a genius who understood publicity. He told me to identify the talent that would help drive the show, clearly that was Jason and Kylie.

“I still remember a storyline about them having a romantic rendezvous in a motel, it was so scandalous it made the front page of the Sydney papers … at the time Neighbours was doing much better in Melbourne than Sydney, but after that, it all changed.

“The hysteria around these hot young stars was unimaginable, we would go to shopping centres with them, and it was like Beatlemania,” Walsh recalls.

The BBC eventually lost Neighbours when rival Channel 5 – hungry for its huge audience – secured the 10-year rights to screen the show for nearly 300 million pounds in 2007.

It was a deal that would guarantee the show for another decade, and for the sort of money television executives today could only ever dream of.

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