Airdate: Miriam Margolyes: Almost Australian

Three-part series Miriam Margolyes: Almost Australian screens on ABC in mid-May, in which the actor and recent Australian citizen embarks on a 10,000-kilometre, two-month journey to discover what it means to be an Australian today.

For Miriam becoming an Australian citizen seven years ago at the age of 71, was “a day of supreme happiness and real joy”. But it also made her realise how little she knew about the place she could now call home – despite having come and gone from Australia for nearly 40 years.

As Miriam sees it, she “lives in a silly little bubble of people who talk like me, and sound like me”. So, Miriam is leaving her home in the Southern Highlands of NSW, to travel around the country to discover what it means to be an Australian.

“In Australia there is a light, the sky. Life feels brighter here. This pulsing nation with so many complex, wondrous people. I need to know this country.” Miriam Margolyes

Over the episodes, Miriam tests her assumptions against the people she meets and ventures far out of her comfort zone to dissect myth from reality – armed only with some wit, a little wisdom, a lot of chutzpah, and a lifetime of natural inquisitiveness.

The result is a surprising, sometimes confronting, funny, unexpected, often joyous and utterly enlightening exploration of the Australian identity in the 21st century, as Miriam takes the pulse of the nation as we’ve never seen it before.

Production Credits: A Southern Pictures Production with principal production investment from Screen Australia in association with ABC. Financed with support from Screen NSW and Screen Territory. Series Producer Ross Wilson. Executive Producers Laurie Critchley ad Aline Jacques. ABC Executive Producer Frances O’Riordan. Head of Entertainment and Factual Josie Mason Campbell.

Tuesday 19th May at 8.30pm on ABC.