Ten Pound Poms follows British families who sign up for assisted passage to Australia in 1956, chasing a fresh start that arrives wrapped in more disappointment than anyone budgeted for.
What is Ten Pound Poms about?
The six-part drama opens with a boatload of hopeful migrants landing in a sun-scorched country that looks nothing like the brochure. Housed in a government hostel while they wait for the new life they were sold, the Roberts family tries to hold together as cramped quarters, culture shock, and old grudges crowd in on them. Around them, other new arrivals are running from pasts they would rather not discuss, and the hostel itself becomes a pressure cooker where every family's private history threatens to surface. What starts as a story about opportunity slowly turns into one about the gap between the country people were promised and the one they actually find, with each episode peeling back another layer of what the Roberts family, and their neighbors, are trying to leave behind.
About the cast
The ensemble is led by Faye Marsay and Warren Brown as the parents anchoring the Roberts family's arrival, with Rob Collins, Michelle Keegan, Leon Ford, and Declan Cole filling out the wider circle of migrants and locals whose lives tangle with theirs at the hostel.
Context & significance
The series takes its title from the real assisted-migration scheme that let British citizens travel to Australia for a nominal fare after the Second World War, part of a decades-long push to grow the country's population. That historical backdrop, of hope, displacement, and a government promise that didn't always match the reality on the ground, sits underneath the family drama throughout.
Watching Ten Pound Poms on Ktime
Ten Pound Poms streams on K-Time with a Farsi dub and Persian subtitles, so the series is easy to follow for Farsi-speaking households. Watching requires a free K-Time account login; the show's page here is open to read without one.