Szomszédok was a Hungarian television series that ran between 1987–1999 and produced 331 episodes, airing its grand finale on December 31, 1999. The series aired on state-owned broadcaster Magyar Televízió bi-weekly in primetime, on Thursday evenings, during it entire run. The series was a soap opera, dealing with the lives of ordinary people, living and working in or around an average lakótelep. Its characters were explored, over time, in equal depth: ranging from elderly pensioners, busy middle aged professionals, up-and-coming young people, and children growing into their teens. Many consider Szomszédok to be the definitive Hungariantelevision series, being a period piece of sorts that covers the last few years of the communist era, the rendszerváltozás, and nearly a decade of the new market economyHungary thereafter. The series often dealt with the important topics and issues of the day, which affected the lives of everyday people in Hungary. These included politics, the ongoing economical liberalization, and topics such as drug addiction, organized crime, and the introduction of personal computersat home. Szomszédok featured the first gay character in Hungarian broadcast media, a male hairdresser portrayed as a flamboyant, over-the-top gay man, appearing in a smaller, comical recurring role from 1990 to 1993.
Current airing
After some time off the air, Szomszédok was rerun on M1 until 13 March 2015. The rerun was initially narrated by computer text inserts, mainly to guide those too young to remember the late communist era. The original cast and director of the series publicly protested against this practice and the information text bubbles were discontinued after a few episodes. Reruns of this programme is now shown on its sister channel, the classic channel M3. Nowadays, it has only a fraction of its original viewership, as its role has been taken over by Barátok közt, a more vivid and up-to-date daily soap opera produced by the commercial RTL Klub television.
