Michelle Keegan is returning to the small screen this weekend in a brand new BBC drama. The former Coronation Street star ditched filming in the north, and her home in Essex with her husband Mark Wright, to head to Australia to film Ten Pound Poms.
The six-part series, which stars on Sunday night (May 14) at 9pm on BBC One, follows a group of Brits as they leave dreary post-war Britain in 1956 to embark on a life-altering adventure on the other side of the world. For only a tenner, they have been promised a better house, better job prospects and a better quality of life by the sea in sun-soaked Australia.
But life down under isn’t exactly the idyllic dream the new arrivals have been promised. Struggling with their new identity as immigrants, we follow their triumphs and pitfalls as they adapt to a new life in a new country far from Britain and familiarity.
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Ten Pound Poms has been created by BAFTA-winning Danny Brocklehurst, the brains behind Sky Comedy Brassic and BBC drama Ordinary Lies and produced by Eleven, the team behind the award-winning Sex Education.
The series features a star-studded cast with Greater Manchester's very own Michelle Keegan who takes on the role of Kate, a nurse who has left the UK to go to Australia for a very different reason from the rest of the characters.
Game of Thrones actress Faye Marsay will take on the role of Annie in Ten Pound Poms, a 1950s housewife in post-war Northern England, married to Terry, who is played by Warren Brown. Viewers will most likely recognise the Warrington-born actor from a few different roles, including playing Donny Maguire in Shameless, Andy Holt in Hollyoaks, and DS Justin Ripley in the BBC crime drama Luther.
But where Down Under was the series filmed? The cast and crew were primarily at work in Sydney and also lived in Sydney throughout filming. But they travelled all over for filming with locations including the Blue Mountains and Carcoar.
The scenes were shot in and around Sydney, as well as primarily in Scheyville National Park, a protected park located in the north-western suburbs of Sydney.
But it wasn't as sunny and glamourous as it sounds as speaking to the Radio Times and other press about the new drama, Michelle said that "it was actually freezing" and "the opposite" to what many viewers will see on camera.
"We were laughing because obviously, when you hear you're going to work in Australia, you pack your flip flops, your vests. As soon as we landed, I had to go shopping and buy myself a rain coat," she said.
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