Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Ten Pound Poms’ Season 2 On BritBox, Where British Families Try To Rebuild Their Lives In 1950s Australia

Last November, BritBox brought the Australian/British series Ten Pound Poms to American viewers. By that time, a second and final season had already run in its home countries, so it was only a matter of time before the streamer unveiled that second season in this hemisphere.

TEN POUND POMS SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: At a port, people line up to go on a ship headed from Australia to New Zealand.

The Gist:  On that line is Kate Thorne (Michelle Keegan), who impulsively picked up her son Michael (Alastair Bradman) from his school. She’s his birth mother; Michael was taken away from Kate back in England and sent to an Australian orphanage, where he was adopted by the Walker family. She lifts ID documents from a woman’s purse, but she decides to get off that line when the purse theft is reported to the customs authorities.

Back at the hostel where British and other immigrants who took advantage of Australia’s offer for housing for ten pounds are living, the Roberts family is coping with having a new baby in their tight space. Pattie (Hattie Hook) is struggling with her new son, and because the baby is biracial it causes some consternation among the camp’s more racist residents. Stevie Cartwright (Declan Coyle) is sticking to his promise to help Pattie take care of the baby, even though the boy isn’t his. Pattie’s mother Annie (Faye Marsay) continues to struggle with being called “grandma.”

Terry Roberts (Warren Brown) is alarmed when they find out a house won’t be available to them for 14 months. They want to buy a new home, but that means Terry needs more work. He takes a job trying to fix dry rot in a local tenement, where he’s appalled by the conditions. He meets the landlord, Benny Bates (Marcus Graham), when Benny is attacked while trying get rent from a Greek family, and the two of them hit it off. The next day, at a wood-chopping festival, Benny offers Terry a job.

When Annie goes to work at the local department store where she manages the staff, she sees Kate hiding out with Michael. She facilitates a meeting between Kate and the woman who adopted and raised Michael, and Kate comes away from that emotional meeting thinking that she’ll get to see her son on a regular basis.

Photo: Lisa Tomasetti/Eleven/Sony Pictures Television

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Ten Pound Poms, created by Danny Brocklehurst, reminds us a little bit of A Thousand Blows, crossed with Call The Midwife.

Our Take: One of the things that we appreciate about Ten Pound Poms is that it was always supposed to be a two-season story. This isn’t like the aforementioned Call The Midwife or something like When Calls The Heart, that have elongated story arcs or feel more like a slice of life treatment of a period in a region’s history. Brocklehurst writes these stories with an ending in sight, and in the second season, there is more than enough story momentum to make things feel like they’re moving towards some sort of conclusion.

As with the first season, the stories involving Kate as well as the Roberts family dominate the episode. We do have a couple of scenes where we see site manager JJ Walker (Stephen Curry) trying to get his love Sheila Anderson (Sheila Anderson) out of a psychiatric hospital, put there by her husband Bill (Leon Ford) after she attempted suicide, and there’s a bit about Marlene Chase (Cheree Cassidy), who owns the store where Annie works, avoiding her ex husband. But, for the most part, the arcs that are going to get the most attention are the ones for Kate and for the Robertses.

What we hope is that the first season’s dark moments are fewer and further in between in Season 2. Not that there won’t be struggles, but the idea that there’s a definitive end to this story coming at the end of the second season means that eventually the main players on this show will have some sort of satisfying ending, even if it’s not a completely happy one.

Photo: Lisa Tomasetti/Eleven/Sony Pictures Television

Performance Worth Watching: Michelle Keegan continues to be the show’s emotional center as Kate, even if her latest impulse takes her away from the moral center.

Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Kate finds out in a very painful way that Michael’s adoptive mother was never going to honor the deal they made.

Sleeper Star: Sam Delich is Ray Skinner, a new arrival to the immigration camp that seems to be offering his services — almost any service — to whoever is willing to pay him.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Annie, after encountering Kate, tells Marlene that she can’t stay at the staff beach party because her stomach hurts, Marlene asks, “You riding the cotton bicycle?”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Ten Pound Poms works because its characters are easy to root for as they try to make new lives for themselves in Australia. And the fact that the show is working towards a conclusion ensures that the stories will stay focused.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.