Encountering the ghost of your younger self: heartfelt drama ‘Homebodies’

When Darcy moved to town, he thought he left a lot behind. But when a smart but shy 20-year-old man returns to his hometown to take care of his estranged mother Nora, the family challenge is too much for him to handle. Darcy (played by Luke Wiltshire) discovers that Nora (Claudia Karvan) has been living with the ghost of her pre-revolutionary youth. Dee (Jazi Hall) is a lovely but impulsive and chaotic reminder of what Darcy thought he had left behind.

A wonderful and beloved six-part series for SBS People from home is the creation of award-winning author AP Pobjoy, whose previous work spans the coming years It is not deleted as well as the movie Why Did She Have To Tell The World.

Pobjoy says in his heart, People from home family drama.

“It’s about a mother and son who love each other but can’t always communicate. It’s about the difficulty of parental grief and it’s about a man who comes home and realizes that growing up doesn’t mean turning off. I wanted to tell a story where the character’s journey doesn’t end with ‘coming out’ or transitioning. Darcy’s story, reassembling what happened at home, and reassembling what happened at home is about what happens. He thinks he has to leave, which we all, regardless of gender, face.”

When Darcy arrives home, things quickly take a turn for the worse. Dee steals Darcy’s car, Darcy faces a life-or-death decision (and finds potential love) and Nora is caught between two versions of her child.

Karvan, you have explained People from home “like a love letter to a parent”, he says he hopes that this series will also help parents understand what their children are going through.

“What he says about the families involved with me is just the role of the parent – the crossroads that you come to as a parent, when you go from being the boss and the person who says, ‘Okay, you eat now and you shower now and you’re going to study now’ to gradually become the person who has to allow this mysterious creature to have power over his life and not bring that thing in’ that doesn’t fix it. of abandoning the role of parenting and respecting and having faith in another family member.”

Pobjoy’s experiences inspired the ‘past’ storyline.

“When I changed, it was a good and necessary step in my life. But I quickly realized that although I felt more like myself than before, other people around me were still adjusting the situation. In my family in particular, there was a feeling of sadness combined with love. They were learning this new part of me, while holding on to the version of me that was no longer the same.

“Returning to my friendship home during that time brought those feelings into sharper focus. I felt sure of who I was becoming in my adult life, but when I returned to my old room, to old jobs and family changes, it could be as if I was being pulled back to my former self. It made me think about how we carry our past life and how the people we love sometimes have difficulty reconciling. People from home he realizes that with the ghost’s supernatural device. Instead of treating the transition as a clean break between “before” and “after,” the show imagines what it would look like if both types of humans lived together.

People from home set director Harry Lloyd (The Rock Island Mysteries, Dog Eats the World) ponders the importance of the rural-urban background. “I think that most of the time, the stories that are transmitted live in a place where rejection is deeply felt and society can often reject trans people. And I think what’s refreshing People from home that it’s about family coming together. Everyone is at a different stage.

“They are home it is a good representation of the changing stories because it is not just in the regional town, but it is all focused on the complexities of the family about returning home. And many trans stories are about leaving those places and the rejection felt in those places. But what I love about our story is that it doesn’t just stay gray – when Darcy feels like he has to leave to be, so does George. [a school friend of Darcy’s] He lived and found his crime, which I think is important – but it also represents a family when a parent tries to fail.

“It’s my favorite thing about being represented People from home that Nora tries, but is not perfect, and does not accept Darcy’s world of infidelity and the vocabulary that comes with it. He’s not doing very well, which I think a lot of parents can understand … I like to see this family try and fail but always find a way to get back together.”

People from home he was heavily shot in the New South Wales town of Oberon.

“We were welcomed with open arms at Oberon and the locals were very happy that an SBS show was happening in their town. And he just proposed the show, because we didn’t have to shoot Sydney in the countryside. It was already there for us, and there was all this kind of magic in Oberon that we didn’t expect… It gave us these little things that only come from those gems,” Pobjoy says.

Wiltshire welcomed the change to work on a show that shares the experiences of trans men.

“We learn about ourselves from what we see in the media. And if you don’t see yourself in the media, you’re taught that who you are is wrong, that you’re not normal and that there’s something wrong with you. So working on a show like this, it’s more than doing a TV show. It’s about showing kids and young people that it’s okay, and if they feel alone, and they feel this way. It can be complicated, but in your heart, there’s a lot of love there.

This article includes material provided by Mad Ones Films.

People from home premieres on Saturday 28 March at 8.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand.