You need to realise that a plant that starts growing fast carries on growing fast, and may therefore leave you with a very big pruning job, which will get considerably worse if you neglect to perform it. Also you may annoy your neighbour if your plants start overhanging his garden. So Leyland cypress grows fast, but leaves you with a huge problem.

That said, I have a number of hedges in my garden, and the one I find least trouble to maintain is the "laurel" hedge. It had been allowed to get overgrown by the previous owner, and was a hell of a job to reduce to a reasonable size. But now it is of intended size, it is easy to keep it to size by regular clipping with electric hedgeclipping shears. Depending on the weather, needs doing once or twice a year (twice when there is a damp spring). The reason it is easy to prune is that the shoots are fairly soft to cut through, provided you keep at it, and don't miss a year.

I have more attractive sections of hedge, for example Virburnum tinus, and Forsythia, but they need hand pruning because the wood gets hard quickly. If you want a more informal shrubbery, then those are cheap plants to include in one. I wouldn't put laurel in such a shrubbery though, it turns into a large tree.

It is a good idea to mention a hedge in advance to your neighbour, so you can agree in advance how it will be maintained on your neighbour's side, to the extent it grows higher than the fence.