Ten Pound Poms: Sad, bad TV drama seems to hate Australia | Peter Goers

It’s as phony as a three-pound note and it’s hugely popular with people happy to believe that death was preferable to living in Australia, writes Peter Goers.

Ten Pound Poms is a new drama on Stan.

In the TV series Ten Pound Poms a ten pound pom prefers death to Australia.

This is shades of the character in Oscar Wilde’s Importance Of Being Earnest who, when confronted with immigration, declares “Australia! I’d sooner die”.

Ten Pound Poms is a BBC soap opera made by and for British people, and its loathing and resentment of Australia is appalling, unrelenting and extraordinary. It’s an inept, shocking and highly offensive TV show.

After WWII, one million British people emigrated to Australia on Australian Government assisted packages for ten pounds each. Together with vast European immigration to Australia the Poms were part of the biggest migration scheme in history.

The British people who came here left the privations of war-ravaged, dank Britain for the sunshine of opportunity in our country.

Kylie Minogue posts a new pic to Instagram after the release of her new song Padam Padam Picture: Instagram

Tina Turner and Jimmy Barnes at rugby league’s 1993 Winfield Cup.

The vast majority loved Australia and were and are grateful for their new lives here just as Australians are grateful to them for what they’ve added to our culture and society including two PMs, the Bee Gees, the Easybeats, John Paul Young, John Farnham, Jimmy Barnes and Kylie Minogue.

However in the series Ten Pound Poms most of the Poms loathe Australia and are tortured by Australians.

Set in 1956, the miserable family of an alcoholic bricklayer with PTSD from the war comes to Australia and is even more miserable.

Apparently there was no racism in Britain in the 50s. The Nissen Hut migration hostel is dilapidated and inexplicably privately owned and there are cockroaches in the food. Quickly, the father becomes unwittingly implicated in the violent death of an Aboriginal child.

His daughter is instantly impregnated by an Aboriginal youth.

The Aboriginal people in the series are depicted as evil, a schoolteacher is brutal and evil, the owner of the hostel is evil and the police are evil, stupid and corrupt. Welcome to Australia.

Almost every Australian in the series is a racist bigot and one of the very few nice Australians is, incredibly, a bohemian owner of a shop in a small country town who owns a seaside mansion replete with 21st century decor and swimming pool.

The British cast members playing Mancunians seem to lack the requisite mushy pea accent and the show has provided work for Australian actors and crew, all of whom should be ashamed of the show.

David Field plays an aggressive racist ditch digger and gives the hammiest performance I’ve seen in decades.

It’s disgusting that he’s meant to represent Australian people to a British audience.

The show could not be worse.

Of course there are ugly Australians and of course they should be depicted as they are superbly in the greatest Australian film ever made, Wake In Fright, which was, happily, a British production and the ugliness was balanced with sardonic humour and truth.

I know it's hard to make a period drama... but come on!
Watching 10 Pound Poms.. in the background a 2000s built M-Set train crossing the bridge.. couldn't wait 30 seconds for it to pass!!
The inaccuracies in this show are next level! #BBC#10PoundPoms#TenPoundPomspic.twitter.com/inN9kHwZ1H

— Andy Craig (@Ancray) May 19, 2023

Ten Pound Poms is an historical drama yet it’s chockers with howling inaccuracies.

In the show we see a recreation of the first moments of TV in Australia as an actor playing an unacknowledged Bruce Gyngell introduces entertainers Toni Lamond and Frank Sheldon who were actually not there that night.

International phone calls were not instantly made in 1956, there were no cane toads in Sydney, people at posh parties did not swill beer from the bottle and beer bottles were only long necks then.

The entire show seems to happen over one summer in which there are no flies, no British person ever complains about the heat and a girl is impregnated and carries the child for nine months and gives birth seemingly in the space of the same summer.

The show is offensive, it hates Australia and Australians and fails to appreciate the home and opportunities we gave to the ten pound poms who wanted to come here. It depicts Australia as full of stupid, evil racists and the show is also offensive to many British immigrants.

It’s a very bad show. It’s as phony as a three pound note and, shockingly, it’s hugely popular in Britain among people happy to hate multicultural Australia and happy to believe that death was preferable to living in Australia. Ten Pound Poms truly gives us all something to whinge about. How sad and bad.