Neighbours star Annie Jones has revealed that Jane and Mike may still have their happy ever after in the new series of the Australian soap.
When the show ended last year, we saw Jane reunited with her childhood sweetheart after Mike roared back into town. Mike bought a house on the cul-de-sac and it seemed he and Jane were set for a life together.
But now that Neighbours is coming back, the soap rescued and revived by streaming service Amazon Freevee, what does that mean for Mike and Jane's future?
For those final episodes, Hollywood star Guy Pearce jetted to Oz to reprise the role of Mike after three decades away from the soap that gave him his big break.
However, in-demand actor Guy is highly unlikely to be coming back to Ramsay Street on a weekly basis, leaving fans worried this would spell the end for the rekindled romance.
Annie reveals that this isn’t the case. In fact, she and Guy worked together to make sure the love story continues.
Annie and Guy have remained firm friends since they first starred in the soap together as Mike and Jane back in 1986, so were keen to do all they could to protect their characters’ love.
So, they came up with a way to get around Guy being unable to rejoin the soap full-time.
“The two of us threw together a couple of ideas, shared those with the producers and came up with a solution. I think it's very satisfying and people will be pleased,” says Annie.
“Guy is such a beautiful person and wants to do right by the Mike and Jane story and by the fans who loved their story in the last episode.
“We actually shot some stuff earlier this year in a secret location in the UK over a few days.”
So, when the show returns, we’ll find Jane still very much in love.
“Jane got her man, and her new stepchild in Mike’s daughter, Sam, so it's all happy families,” reveals Annie.
“There’s even a bit of backstory that Mike has fitted into the neighbourhood, he's great friends with Karl, and they jam together a lot! They've got a bit of a Ramsay Street Band going on. Mike really loves living there.”
Like all the cast, Annie was surprised when the news came that the show was returning to our screens last year, just months after the soap screened its last instalment.
“My husband and I bought an old house in the country and our plan was to just renovate it and grow vegetables and sort of semi-retire a bit,” she says.
“I was thrilled to hear that the show was coming back — for myself, for my fellow actors and crew, but also for the fans.
“It was an easy decision to return. I just love it. It's a real adrenaline rush for me, just learning the lines and the pace of it. It's really quite addictive.”
The new episodes see Jane back in the thick of the action, with her son Byron living on the Street and a busy job at Erinsborough High.
“Jane is very involved with the school — that's her great passion at the moment, apart from her darling Mike!” laughs Annie. “She's really focused on making the school as fantastic as it can but there’s a few ups and downs.
“Things were a bit tense with Byron last time we saw them because of his escorting work. But now their relationship is really good and he's living in the street. So Jane's loving that.”
“We have a new actor who plays Byron [Xavier Molyneux taking over from Joe Klocek] and he’s great. Apart from being incredibly handsome, he's really switched on and he wants to be good. And that's what you want, someone who is keen to learn.”
With Annie having starred on the show at the height of 1980s ‘Neighbours-mania’, she is well aware of the popularity of the show in the UK.
Earlier this year she had a very personal fan experience when she and her castmates toured the UK in the live ‘Celebration Tour’ — a show so popular it sold out the London Palladium twice!
“We did a four-hour fan meet-and-greet before each show and it became blatantly obvious during the tour how much the show means to a lot of fans,” she says. “They had us crying when we heard firsthand just how devastated they were when they thought that the show had finished.
“And also hearing how generational it is. Grandma was the first viewer and now some are at three generations and counting. It’s amazing.”
With hundreds of old episodes now on Freevee, fans have been enjoying a trip down memory lane as they wait for the new series to arrive. Annie has no hesitation about which character from the past she’d love to make the move to the new series.
“It’s impossible as she’s no longer with us, but do I wish I could bring Vivian Grey back as Mrs Mangel,” she says.
Neighbours returns on Amazon Freevee from 18 September, dropping one episode per day from Monday to Thursday every week. For more information on how to watch, see www.amazon.co.uk/watchneighbours
