When you think of the classic Aussie soap opera, you immediately think of the rolling beaches of Summer Bay, shirtless Chris Hemsworth, and Home And Away, or maybe the iconic cul-de-sac that is Ramsay St, with Harold Bishop‘s caravan parked out front, potentially even Julian McMahon‘s first-ever role as Kane in the short-lived The Power, The Passion. (Which has the most incredible tv ad I’ve ever seen.)
What you probably don’t think about though, is refugees, people of colour, and definitely not Sydney‘s western suburbs.
Considering it’s the 30th anniversary of Home And Away, and therefore the 20th year of me being told to shut the fuck up between 7pm and 7.30 weeknights, filmmaker and producer Dean Cross decided to team up with a Liberian comedy group, Lib Comedy, to create the pilot episode of Where Is Home? directly challenging the whiteness of Aussie TV.
A religious watcher of the Summer Bay series, Cross said that he wanted to directly go against the grain of the soapie formula, giving a platform for the voices of people of colour to be heard.
I have been obsessed by Home and Away for a long time. It’s part of a meta-narrative, a myth, that Australia was and is a White country. Through this project, I want to empower the people I work with to tell their own stories, in their own voices.
Premiering at the Museum Of Contemporary Art‘s Druitt Days Live event over the weekend in Mount Druitt, the pilot of Where Is Home? follows a Liberian refugee family as they arrive in Sydney, realise that the oceanside Summer Bay isn’t the right place for them to be, and they relocate out to Mount Druitt – where the community is much more multicultural, but things don’t go as planned.
Speaking with the ABC, Cross says that the pilot of Where Is Home? actually parallels the first episode of Home And Away.
The first episode of Home and Away is about this dysfunctional family, in a way — these parents with foster kids, and the father loses his job, so they have to relocate and they move to this new community, but nobody likes them.
The episode also challenges stereotypes of African-Australians, especially as certain people are pushing agendas of “African gangs” present in Victoria.
There are no solid plans for a full series of Where Is Home? but Cross says that he’s open to exploring the soap’s future with interested networks.
