There’s no doubt that Neighbours is one of the most iconic Aussie shows of all time. But when it was cancelled in December 2025 (after a brief revival from 2023 to 2025 on Amazon Freevee), soap-lovers feared it would truly be the end of the line for our beloved Ramsay Street residents. Now, it seems like Erinsborough is being revived in a whole new form for social media audiences and becoming a fascinating test case for how traditional television can be recycled for new audiences.
Fremantle has joined forces with RoseBerry, a television studio which focuses on creating vertical-video dramas for social media, to re-cut Neighbours storylines for mobile-first viewing using AI technology.
While traditional soap operas focus on a range of characters in an ensemble cast, the vertical video will follow singular character storylines.
According to Variety, the first episodes created by the AI software — which scans the library of episodes for the most interesting and engaging storylines — will focus on Margot Robbie‘s character Donna.
The episodes will be available to stream on the app, epis, a microdrama platform dedicated to vertical dramas.
“Neighbours has an extraordinary legacy, with decades of memorable characters, stories and talent,” said Jens Richter, the CEO of Commercial and International at Fremantle.
“Working with RoseBerry allows us to explore incredible archive in an entirely new way, bringing much-loved IP to new audiences while demonstrating how established television libraries can continue to evolve, find new relevance and importantly create new commercial opportunities. It’s an exciting example of how technology and creative thinking can unlock new value from our diverse catalogue and content library.”
Neighbours first premiered on our screens in 1985, airing a whopping 9363 episodes during it’s three decade run.
While Neighbours being re-edited for social media is a novelty for Australian television, it reflects a much larger shift happening across the global entertainment industry.
What are microdramas?
Microdramas are one early genre of the emerging vertical video format.
First originating in China, microdramas are feature-length movies or television series which have been broken down into one to three-minute long segments in a vertical format specially for smartphones. Most often the series have plots reminiscent of soap operas or telenovelas with dramatic cliff-hangers and romance plots.
Despite being an emerging industry, there are production houses around the globe dedicated to making this kind of content. Some examples include DramaBox, Content Republic and ReelShort.
Are microdramas the future of television?
Over the last few years, social media has changed significantly. And, after the pandemic saw people all over the world turn to their phones for entertainment, short-form vertical video apps like TikTok, and Instagram’s video format Reels started to boom. As a result, the way users interact with social media, and entertainment media in general, has shifted with audiences consuming more vertical video than ever before.
According to Owl & Co’s yearly Vertical Economy Report, vertical video should be considered the “third audio-visual language” alongside TV and film, and is on track to generate $150 billion in revenue excluding China in 2026. Meanwhile in China where the format originated, microdrama revenues surpassed the country’s traditional film box office in 2025.
Despite the growing success, microdramas have often been dismissed due to their cheesy, dramatic or unrealistic plotlines, and traditionally low production value. However, these factors don’t seem to be stopping the growth online.
In fact, with growing popularity, more and more production houses like RoseBerry are turning to microdramas as their focus and producing content akin to traditional television media, and using generative AI to streamline the production process. While this naturally opens up fears and questions about the impact this will have on traditional broadcast media, it’s worth questioning whether using microdramas as a repackaging format for older content like Neighbours could be a good thing.
The adaptation of Neighbours into vertical microdramas proves that our appetite for over-the-top drama isn’t going anywhere any time soon, it’s just changing format.
While old or cancelled shows have traditionally found new audiences through reruns and on streaming services, but Neighbours‘ inclusion into the microdrama space could see the beginning of a new era of syndication for cancelled shows.
Whether microdramas will become the next evolution of television or just another way to revisit familiar stories remains to be seen, but Neighbours demonstrates that the lifespan of a TV series may no longer end when the final episode airs.
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