Miriam Margolyes takes an Australian Adventure with BBC Two

The performer goes back down under next month for the Beeb…

Miriam Margolyes:

“I came to Australia first because of my partner. And when I got to know Australia a bit, and I knew the people and the countryside, I just felt completely at home. And because there isn’t the same class system, there’s a different class system but not the same. I just started to feel I fitted in completely.”

In the series Miriam Margolyes: A New Australian Adventure the actress returns to Oz for the trip of a lifetime. Margolyes has appeared in everything from soap opera with Crossroads, sitcom in Blackadder and big screen highs with Harry Potter to name just a few of the very different types of performances and programmes she’s featured in over the past sixty years.

But offscreen and away from the stage, for Miriam, Australia has always been a land of opportunity and aspiration; something she needs in her life, now more than ever. At 82, she’s just undergone a major medical procedure.

Miriam with her parents

Miriam wants to embrace change and be open to reinventing herself if she wants to stay relevant and connected.

So to give herself a kickstart by returning to Australia in search of new possibilities. This time, she’ll meet a whole host of colourful characters and head to three places she’s always wanted to explore: Perth, Broken Hill and Byron Bay. All three are iconic locations that epitomise the things she loves about Australia; but are they also, like her, in the throes of change?

Miriam Margolyes:

“I wanted to make this series because the more I live in Australia, and the more I make documentaries here and enjoy doing so, I feel that there’s still more to unpack and mine – I really want to mine the people, because it’s the people that make the place. So, the more people that I can meet, especially at a time of my life, where I feel that I’m, as it were, in transit, from one stage to another stage of life, I get an excitement from it. And I will want to make even more. It’s an inexhaustible subject Australia, because the people are coming and going, and the country is in flux. And it’s a very interesting time to investigate.”

Miriam Margolyes: A New Australian Adventure begins on Friday, August 2nd at 9 pm on BBC Two, with all three episodes available on iPlayer the same day.