A new life? With BBC instead of Ryanair on taxi fares to Australia

Compared to this offer, Ryanair tickets look like pure luxury: a new life on the other side of the world – for just ten euros! And it’s not made up, because Danny Brocklehurst’s Ten Pound Palms series, produced by the BBC and Australian streaming service Stan, tells a true, rarely told chapter from the great book of immigrant stories. It’s one of those shows that sometimes makes you google what’s true and what’s fiction.

But one after the other. We owe it to the Eurovision Song Contest over the years: Australia is closer to Europe than you might think, and this relationship is no coincidence. A continent today is often a dream destination. Down Under promises adventure, not just because it’s as remote as it gets. Today it attracts more tourists, but of course Europe and Australia also have a deep history. To be more precise: Great Britain and Australia.

“Ten Pound Palms” is devoted to a fascinating chapter in the eventful, questionable history between these two countries – and a dark chapter in Australian politics. Many governments of the 20th century aimed to keep the continent “white” – as the British first settled and lived in the 18th century. But this sensitivity to the crime of immigration was absent in the mid-20th century, at least not at the official level. Conversely, Australia is concerned that the growing demand for workers in “poor conditions” will still have to be met by migrants from neighboring Asian countries.

So instead, the British were lured into a brilliant campaign: from 1945, newspaper advertisements in Great Britain (at first and then mainly) promised a new life in Australia – for just ten British pounds. For decades, Australian governments subsidized immigration, leading to the more favorable nickname of the “Ten Pound Poms” for British people who were often desperate for a fresh start. The series tells about the fate of some of these people, such as the Roberts family: father Terry (Warren Brown) again squanders his wages in the pub, mother Annie (Fay Marche) is no longer wanted and finds out in a desperate search. A newspaper ad for two children with a good life for them too.

©BBC

The series wastes no time, quickly sending us back to Australia with Roberts. After all, the premise is more familiar to British and Australian audiences than to German audiences. At the same time, I love exploring the details of “The Crown” as I do. Lo and behold, not a few but hundreds of thousands accepted the Australian government’s offer before it was discontinued in the 1980s. In Australia, thanks to Danny Brocklehurst’s story, we’re not just following the Roberts family. The rules start to intertwine and of course, as you can already guess, Australia is not the solution to all problems.

“Ten Pounds Palms” is a six-part story about high hopes, surprising opportunities and misplaced expectations of immigration. At first glance, this doesn’t really seem new. One feels reminded of the migrant epic “The Club of Singing Butchers” published by ARD at the end of 2019, because here and there there is a special enchantment that the time described in each case is not often the subject. A film adaptation. In this series there is a special emigration route, unknown from a German point of view, at least on this politically organized scale.

In the UK, Ten Pounds Boom was a hit on BBC One. The series, produced in association with Australian streaming service Stan, premiered on May 14 this year; The six-part season finale aired in mid-June. Against the backdrop of a lesser-known episode in Australian history, it’s unfortunately not yet clear when this social drama will arrive in Germany, given the special title, a little later. This is to be desired because this unknown, curious episode about a family drama is explained in a conventional but technically clean manner.