When 'Neighbours' ended, fans felt like they'd lost good friends

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-06-13 04:00

Australia; SA

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When the TV show Neighbours ended (briefly) in 2022, devotees of the show say they experienced strong grief, loss, and sometimes a lack of closure, according to a survey of nearly 1,300 fans conducted by Aussie researchers shortly after the screening of what was thought to be the long-running soap's final episode, before it was resurrected by Amazon a few months later. The survey measured emotions and thoughts related to grief, acceptance that the series had ended, distress at the loss of relationships with favourite characters, feelings of closure, and how grateful respondents were for the series. Superfans, fans who watched Neighbours to be entertained and exposed to different lifestyles, and those who had formed empathetic 'parasocial' relationships with characters were most likely to experience grief when the 'final' curtain fell, the researchers say. The findings shed light on these 'parasocial' relationships we can form with fictional characters, and provide evidence that we can experience the loss of a TV series or character as grief, the authors conclude.