Guilt departs in classic style and ‘whinging poms’ get it in the neck

“COME and say g’day” is Tourism Australia’s slogan, and what a pitch they have for you on the website. There’s even an animated film featuring a cute lady kangaroo and a wise-cracking unicorn, about all the wonders Oz has to offer. Very tempting.

Unless, that is, you’ve watched

Ten Pound Poms (BBC1, Sunday), a new drama set among the wave of migrants from the UK who bought a cheap passage to the Lucky Country in search of a better life.

Far from a paradise, this Australia was thick with racist, uncouth drunks who despised the “whinging poms” going over there, taking Aussies’ jobs, etc. Granted it was more than half a century ago, but still.

Blighty did not fare much better, being a snow-blasted hellscape where there was nowt for men to do after a week’s hard labouring but drink themselves into oblivion.

Danny Brocklehurst’s drama preferred the broad brush over a more detailed tool.

Like a new soap trying to draw viewers in, characters and storylines were introduced at a furious rate. Soon the place was hoaching with secrets. Nurse Kate (Michelle Keegan) had mysteriously left her fiance behind in Britain.

A newly arrived teenager kept mysteriously clutching her stomach. The camp foreman spoke in a mysterious manner to an English woman who mysteriously wanted to go back to Britain.

If you didn’t mind the odd outbreak of clunkiness (wife, mopping up husband’s vomit, spies advert for £10 tickets) the hour rattled along like a good ‘un.

The main attraction was Keegan, looking like a young Elizabeth Taylor who had wandered into a moderately budgeted BBC drama, but I also liked the swagger of her mate Annie (Faye Marsay), a pioneer type if ever I saw one. She’ll sort those Aussies out.

In Steeltown Murders (BBC1, Monday) it was the turn of rural Wales, and the 1970s in general, to get it in the neck. Another crime drama based on real events, this one concerned the murders of three young women.

The initial inquiry was botched.

One of the detectives, Paul Bethell, thought the killer had escaped justice. So when new evidence comes along decades later he asks to work the case again.

Steeltown Murders ambled back and forth from the 1970s to the Noughties, with Philip Glenister playing the older Bethell and Scott Arthur the bell-bottom trousered, long-haired, younger version.

The presence of Glenister, the groovy wardrobe, and top tunes from the time, gave the piece a Life on Mars air, which sat awkwardly with the seriousness of the story. But it did make all the right noises about the sexism of the times.

Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction (BBC1, Wednesday) was another in what is now a long line of celebrityfronted documentaries, this one featuring one of the guys from the pop-‘punk’ band Busted (says she, Googling frantically).

Drink and drugs had been Matt’s poisons in the past, often indulged in while on tour.

Now about to hit the road again, he was terrified of relapsing. So off he went to see how other people stay sober.

There were five key people in the film, Matt, his wife Emma Willis, the television presenter, and their three children. We did not see much of the kids, but Emma slowly became the

central focus of the documentary, lifting it above the usual fare.

Matt did what so many other celebrities have done before him – talk to doctors, sit in on a meeting of addicts, revisit his childhood, and so on.

There were the usual irritations, such as rehab centres being spoken of as though they were an option available to many.

In reality you are as likely to find an NHS one as a pub with free booze. Emma, meanwhile, slowly became the voice of those who are the collateral damage of addiction – the wives, children, parents, siblings and the rest. It is a voice that does not command as much attention as it should, but that was not the case here.

The most illuminating and moving part of the film was the couple’s visit to Glasgow

to meet a group from the Scottish Families charity and support group. That came at the end, when it might have been better as the starting point.

Guilt (BBC Scotland, Tuesday/ BBC2, Thursday) reached the end of its road. There have only been 12 episodes in total. This, plus the superb writing and terrific cast, made it go by all too quickly, as good things tend to do.

Creator Neil Forsyth chose a classic route to the denouement, taking the tale back to where it began, and added a touch of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (or was it Wacky Races?) as the players jostled each other to get over the finish line. The good got what was coming to them, the bad likewise, and somewhere in the middle stood Max.

I could not work out that final look, far less how the dates would have worked, but like Guilt itself it was a wonderful surprise. A tip of the hat to all.

Ten Pound Poms motored along at a cracking pace; while the excellent Guilt went by all too quickly