Neighbours: The Explosion

Neighbours: The Explosion^[1] is a storyline from the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, which began on 19 March 2013, when the marquee hosting Toadfish Rebecchi (Ryan Moloney) and Sonya Mitchell's (Eve Morey) wedding reception collapsed after a gas bottle exploded. The storyline also saw the deaths of two regular characters; Rhys Lawson (Ben Barber) and Priya Kapoor (Menik Gooneratne). "Neighbours: The Explosion" was broadcast as the highlight of the serial's 28th anniversary week and executive producer Richard Jasek stated that the wedding was a good opportunity to heighten the drama and have the event affect the whole community. The cast and crew played on Toadie's previous bad luck with weddings for the storyline and Moloney thought it would rival his 2003 wedding to Dee Bliss (Madeleine West), which ended in her presumed death.

Filming for the storyline commenced during late November 2012 at FremantleMedia Australia's Melbourne studios and on location in Kangaroo Ground. The episodes were filmed over four days; the wedding ceremony and the reception scenes were shot in the first two days, with the explosion being shot on the third day and the aftermath on the fourth. Filming of the actual explosion took four hours and it was created using low-impact explosives and special effects. Two explosions were filmed from different angles and the scenes were then merged during post-production. The scene was one biggest stunts the show had shot in a while.

Both Eleven and Channel 5 released promotional trailers for the storyline. Channel 5 also announced that as well as screening the explosion episodes during their usual afternoon timeslots, they would also air an hour-long episode at 10pm, marking the first time the soap had been aired during prime time in the UK.^[2] The broadcast gave viewers a chance to see the explosion and a first look at the following episode. The hour-long episode brought in 1.44 million viewers. In Australia, the explosion episode attracted 280,000 viewers, making Neighbours the third most watched show on digital multi-channels that night. "Neighbours: The Explosion" was well received by critics, who believed it was one of the "biggest storylines of the year".