The soap follows the daily lives of several families who live in the fictional Ramsay Street, Erinsborough, including the usual soap events of births, deaths, and marriages. The show features a regular turnover of attractive young actors mixed in with the more stable cast of older people. Though it is not commonly mentioned so as to not alienate viewers in other Australian cities, Erinsborough is undoubtedly supposed to be a suburb of Melbourne. The show is filmed in Melbourne, and for street scenes uses a court in Vermont South, a suburb in eastern Melbourne.
Many successful Australian actors and singers had some of their earliest work on Neighbours, including Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Natalie Imbruglia, Jason Donovan, Holly Valance and Delta Goodrem.
The show is also popular in the United Kingdom. It quickly gained a cult following there in the late 1980s when BBC ONE began screening it at lunchtime, and it was soon given an early evening repeat slot, where it often achieved an audience rating greater than the total population of its native Australia.
The show has also been sold to networks in many other countries.