The stories of post-war Brits who emigrated to Australia in the 1950s get another chapter with season two of Ten Pound Poms. Stephen A Russell previews what’s in store for them Down Under.
Remember when we used to send postcards from our holiday hotspots rather than upload pics to Instagram or text them to our mates instantaneously?
Back in the days when snail mail was still glorious and marvellous missives arrived regularly, rather than simply junk and ominous debt letters, the joy was palpable every time we opened the post box.
It all seems like a lifetime ago now. But postcards could be tricksy things, too. Long before AI started to mangle reality with sausage fingers and the like, photographers and attendant artists had ways and means to make the great wide world look shinier than it really was in these glossy notes boastful of the tourist traps we’d ticked off.
Unreal promise unmasked is the fate of a gaggle of English (and otherwise) hopefuls in season one of Brassic co-creator Daniel Brockhurst’s Ten Pound Poms, streaming now on Stan. A co-production between local streaming service Stan and the BBC, Ten Pound Poms tasks Brockhurst with imagining the dashed hopes of many of roughly one million hopeful souls. Can they truly build a better life down under?
Hopes and prayers
Our main point of view is via working-class couple Terry and Annie Roberts from Stockport.
Played by Luther actor Warren Brown, Terry was a big drinking bricklayer frittering away his pay packets to try and shake loose the trauma of his time spent as a prisoner of war in the ill-fated German city of Dresden during WWII. Annie, played by Andor star Faye Marsay, was exasperated, trying to run a household and care for their kids with next to no help while mourning her time spent as a baker while most of the men were away and the promise of romance that break from reality offered.
They dreamed of escaping the ruins of post-war Britain, shattered by the Luftwaffe. So when Annie spied an ad for a brand-new life of opportunity in the beautiful sunshine of Australia—in the newspaper she used to soak up her struggling husband’s vomit, no less—the ten pound price tag seemed too good to be true. Largely because it was.
The debut season revealed that good jobs were harder to come by than expected in the land down under. There was plenty of ill will slung at this new wave of ‘whinging’ poms as well as any person of colour, including First Nations peoples. That, and the postcard-perfect homes promised turned out to be corrugated iron sheds sans plumbing, not unlike the POW camp Terry barely made it out of alive.
Down in the dumps, Annie found solace in her friendship with nurse Kate (Brassic star Michelle Keegan). Kate, it turns out, had gotten shot of a not great fiancé and was, in fact, on a mission to reunite with the kid taken from her as a girl by any means.
Meanwhile, Annie and Terry’s teenage daughter Pattie (Hattie Hook, Of An Age) wound up pregnant. Terry allied with fellow war veteran Ron, an Aboriginal man played by Total Control star Rob Collins. Ron is smarting at his abandonment by a colonial nation that was all too willing to throw him into the machinery of war to defend the lands stolen from him, but not to recognise his valiant service.
Twisting pathways ahead
Season two picks up the threads of these trials with a tighter focus. Terry is on much firmer ground but still struggling to land a decent gig. So when his intervention in the violent wash-up of a tenant eviction dangles the promise of a much better deal, but working for a dodgy dealer, a crisis of conscience is sparked. Will he opt for the dream home while turfing others less fortunate out of theirs? If so, what will be the cost?
Annie’s time in the British wartime workforce and then her gig at the department store in Australia has only increased her desire for emancipation. Falling in with the emerging feminist movement, she’s ready to rattle the not-so-gilded cage she finds herself in. And that includes letting it all loose in a news report-inducing bikini that drops jaws agog. But is there room for Terry in her brave new worldview?
Kate’s willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to win back the boy she has dreamed of all these years, but the reality that her gain would be his adoptive mother’s loss gnaws at her soul, even as this tricky situation spirals out of control. Can Kate regain control of her narrative? And if so, what will it take?
Ron’s attempting to carve out what little space this version of Australia will allow him by turning a beach shack into a fish and chip shop. Only the arrival of Maggie Skinner (Maya Stange) and her Irish clan laying claim to the joint threatens to sink his hopes without a trace. Or can they fashion some sort of truce that works for both of their dreams?
With a broader cast including the likes of The Castle star Stephen Curry, The Letdown’s Leon Ford and introducing Taylor Ferguson as single mum Christine, a source of temptation for Terry, Ten Pound Poms promises plenty of drama ahead.
Once again shooting in Scheyville National Park and the oldest corners of Sydney as well as adding the astounding Blue Mountains, directors Ana Kokkinos and Tom McKay have plenty to tangle with in these twisting storylines that nevertheless have postcard-ready backdrops after all.
