2023-07-13 17:10:03
A new start. Here is the promise made by the Australian authorities to the British after the Second World War. For barely 10 pounds sterling (“ten pound”), they transported candidates for exile from Southampton to Sidney, where they praised the sweetness of life with a lot of postcard images. Inspired by this little-known historical episode, this six-part BBC series follows a small group of characters in the land of kangaroos: a nurse in search of her child, a poor family whose father drowns his painful memories of war in the alcohol…
On the spot, the disillusion is harsh. Instead of the villas with gardens, the “poms” (short for “pomegranate”, like the scarlet color of the fruit and their skin) find themselves parked in sheet metal barracks that look like prison camps, with other families from Italy, the Netherlands… And the jobs promised are convict work carried out under a blazing sun. Worse still, newcomers face systemic racism that Aboriginal peoples have long suffered.
Women’s emancipation
Very classic in its direction as in its melodramatic twists, this series rewarded in June at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival seduces by the humanity of its characters, solidly interpreted by a half-British, half-Australian cast. With piercing blue eyes and dazzling freckles, Faye Marsay, an English actress little known in France, is touching in the role of the young mother of a family, who dreams of taking her destiny into her own hands in a country that is at first sight more open to emancipation. women than old England.
Warren Brown (Occupation, Luther) brings his face as a former professional boxer to the character of her husband, a good guy who has come back broken from the front. And Australian actor David Field is absolutely frightening as his xenophobic and surly laborer.
#Ten #Pound #Poms #reverse #Australian #dream