One man, whose wife died tragically five years ago, says watching Neighbours was the only time she was happy.
Irish Times journalist Alex Moffatt was speaking as the Australian soap opera draws to a close after 37 years.
Alex told Lunchtime Live his wife Magda found his obsession with the TV show strange, at first.
"She was Polish and she would watch subtitled films always, art house - very serious demanding things.
"And she regarded me watching my 20 minutes of Neighbours every day as kind of ridiculous and an awful waste of time.
"It took a few years for that to change, and it was to do with the birth of our son at the end of 2015.
"It was just coming home from the hospital and the complete exhaustion and the demands of a very small baby.
"She was shattered by it all, and she couldn't cope with the normal things of reading books or watching the things she would normally watch.
An Australian stamp celebrates Neighbours in 2006. Picture by: Borislav Marinic / Alamy Stock Photo"She started sometimes just joining me when I was watching Neighbours, because it was about the level of what she could cope with in her exhausted state.
"And it gradually grew on her - the biggest change was then that I found it wasn't just when I was there, that she would watch it when I wasn't there.
"I'd be out at work or working late, and she'd be texting me saying: 'You won't believe what's happened'.
"And she'd be watching it with our son as well, who was not even one at the time - and she'd send me a clip of him trying to sing along with the theme song", he says.
He says this is a tradition they've continued.
"It's certainly something I've continued with now, that I always watch it with my son.
"And in fact he bans me from watching it if he's not around - he insists that we have to do it together.
"He's very sorry that it's ending, he's not sure what we're going to be doing next week now when it's all over - or what we'll be watching instead".
'It never clicked with me'
Magda, who was a Garda, took her own life back in December 2017.
"Some of this is looking back in retrospect, I didn't know at the time, but I'm pretty confident now that she was suffering from post-natal depression from the point that she left the hospital after giving birth.
"She was kind of tired and she was angry and agitated, and it just steadily got worse.
"It never clicked with me that something was wrong: how do you distinguish between what's depression, and what's a natural reaction to getting hardly any sleep and looking after a baby all hours of the day?
"It's only in retrospect I can see that it steadily went downhill and it got worse and worse."
Alex says the show really helped her when she needed it.
He recalls: "I remember visiting her in hospital, in John of Gods, one time and she actually sort of doubled over in pain holding herself.
"That is what it was like, it was so overwhelming.
"The other thing that I recall, from maybe just before the worst stages, was her saying that watching Neighbours - the 20 minutes of Neighbours everyday - was the only time she was happy".
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