TV historian Andrew Mercado has called out Home and Away for its lack of queer characters, saying Summer Bay has never had a gay resident and, in his view, never will.
Mercado made the comments at the Melbourne launch of his book Outrageous: The Queer History of Australian TV, held at the Victorian Pride Centre in St Kilda on Monday, November 9, as first reported by David Knox at TV Tonight.
Home and Away, an Australian soap opera that premiered on Seven on January 17, 1988, is now the country’s only soap, after Neighbours ended its run with a final episode on Network 10 in December 2025.
According to Knox, Mercado said the long-running Seven soap “very famously, has no gay in the Bay”.
The launch included a screening of the Outrageous documentary, which revisits the risks taken by shows like Number 96, The Box and Prisoner, where LGBT characters became breakout favourites with Australian audiences.
Mercado told the crowd that on-screen representation stalled in the 1980s, TV Tonight reported.
He pointed to producer Reg Grundy’s view that his job was to entertain rather than educate, and said he disagreed. A soap airing five nights a week, Mercado argued, has a responsibility to teach its audience something, as A Country Practice did by working with health authorities on its storylines.
He said Grundy-produced shows like Neighbours and Home and Away were absent at the very moment positive gay role models were needed most, during the AIDS crisis. It wasn’t until reality TV arrived, he said, that real gay people started appearing regularly on Australian screens.
Rival soap Neighbours built up a long list of queer characters, doing a great deal for diversity, while Home and Away remains reluctant to reflect a modern-day Australia.
Lana Crawford (Bridget Neval) arrived in 2004 as the show’s first lesbian character and shared Neighbours’ first lesbian kiss with Sky Mangel (Stephanie McIntosh). The pair returned to marry for the show’s 35th anniversary in 2020.
Chris Pappas (James Mason) became the soap’s first regular gay male character in 2010, later finding love with nurse Aidan Foster (Bob Morley) and Nate Kinski (Meyne Wyatt).
Aaron Brennan (Matty Wilson) and David Tanaka (Takaya Honda) became one of Australian TV’s landmark same-sex couples, marrying on screen in 2018.
After David was killed off in 2024, Aaron’s final storyline in 2025 saw exes Rhett Norman (Liam Maguire) and Colton Keys (Jakob Ambrose) compete for his affections. He briefly dated both before leaving Erinsborough with Rhett.
Nicolette Stone, played by Charlotte Chimes and later Hannah Monson, was an out lesbian whose romance with bisexual Chloe Brennan (April Rose Pengilly) and surrogacy storyline with Aaron and David put three queer characters at the heart of one family.
In 2019, trans actor and advocate Georgie Stone joined as Mackenzie Hargreaves, the soap’s first transgender character, after pitching the role to executive producer Jason Herbison herself.
In 2022, non-binary actor Kathleen Ebbs played Asher Nesmith, the show’s first non-binary character.
When the show returned in 2023, it introduced the Varga-Murphy family, headed by wives Cara (Sara West) and Remi (Naomi Rukavina).
Mercado said that Home and Away keeps recycling the same storylines, and suggested it would be far more interesting to see one of Summer Bay’s tough, tattooed surfies come out to his mates.
Mercado said he has a good relationship with Seven these days, but believes someone at the network is wary of upsetting viewers on what he described as the last regular Australian drama still running.
In June 2018, Home and Away did featured a storyline where teen character Ty Anderson (Darius Williams) shared a same-sex kiss with his friend Ryder Jackson (Lukas Radovich). Ryder stated he was comfortable with it. However, overwhelmed and struggling with his sexuality, Ty called himself a “freak,” got into a physical fight with Ryder on the beach, and ran away from Summer Bay.
Mercado also dismissed the argument that a gay character would run out of romantic storylines, saying writers could simply introduce bisexual characters to keep plots moving. In his view, the show lacks imagination and sometimes includes queer people only to tick a box.
He contrasted the soap with Seven’s RFDS, which features queer characters in its 7.30pm slot, and questioned why the same couldn’t happen at 7pm. He told the audience he believes Home and Away is the only soap in the Western world without queer characters.
In 2020, Seven blamed “human error” after romantic scenes between Willow and Alex aired in New Zealand but were cut from Australian broadcasts.
Where to see Outrageous in Sydney
Sydney audiences can catch a rare screening of Outrageous: The Queer History of Australian TV at Qtopia Sydney, 301 Forbes St, Darlinghurst, on Monday, November 16, from 7pm to 9pm.
The documentary premiered at Queer Screen during WorldPride 2023 and went on to win Best Feature at the LGBTQ+ Toronto Film Festival. It features Courtney Act, Benjamin Law, Sarah Walker, Carlotta, Keiynan Lonsdale and former High Court justice Michael Kirby.
Tickets are available via Humanitix.
Keep the conversation going
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It’s a relaxed, no-panel night with a short community recognition segment. You can nominate yourself, a colleague or an ally for recognition by emailing contact@mediapride.com.au.
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