Some actors have period drama faces – they were made for a Georgian rectory or a Victorian workhouse. Michelle Keegan is not one of them. She has the glossy hair and flawless complexion of the Love Island generation, and one of those faces in which only the bottom half moves. 

This makes her a strange choice for Ten Pound Poms (BBC One), playing Kate, a young nurse who leaves grim 1950s Britain for a new life in sunny Australia. But Keegan can act, and Kate’s storyline turns out to be an affecting one – she has a secret reason for joining the Ten Pound Pom scheme, under which the Australian government encouraged British workers to emigrate Down Under. 

We also follow the Roberts family – father Terry (Warren Brown), mother Annie (Faye Marsay) and their kids – who have left grimy Stockport for a fresh start in the hope of curing Terry’s drink problem and PTSD. They have been sold a dream of a detached house with a big garden, a stone’s throw from the ocean, so it’s a rude awakening when they’re bussed to a collection of Nissen huts. 

The rudimentary accommodation isn’t the only problem. Terry is not warmly welcomed on the building site where he’s sent to work. “You got blacks in Britain, don’t you? Well, over here, you’re the black,” snarls one of his new colleagues (a monstrous David Field). Racism looms large here, mostly directed at the Aboriginal Australians who are considered by some to be little more than vermin. 

Across six episodes, writer Danny Brocklehurst (Clocking Off, Brassic) weaves his plots and characters with confidence. Terry gets caught up in a crime, which poses a terrible moral dilemma. Annie embraces the opportunities that Australia brings, namely a job and independence. Other new arrivals have their own stories, including a shady Brit so loathsome that he told his children when they were four that Father Christmas didn’t exist “because I didn’t like the idea that he was getting all the credit for my hard work”. 

It’s a solidly enjoyable Sunday night drama, albeit one that feels slightly lacking. It doesn’t have the emotional pull of something like Call the Midwife, and it can feel underwritten in places. Annie complains to the manager of a department store about the treatment of an indigenous customer, but drops her objection immediately when the manager offers her a job – not because Annie is being pragmatic, but because the script needs to move along. 

Still, it’s an interesting period of history. Plus, it’s a new drama that isn’t a hysterical thriller about a woman who discovers that her perfect life has been a lie, or a police procedural based on a real-life murder case. And for that we should be grateful.

Credit: Anita Singh, Telegraph, 14 May 2023