The war in Europe is over, but the one at home has only just begun. The Second World War is ending and throughout Britain, evacuees are returning home to their families - but not the families they remember. Like so many other women, Peggy’s life has been transformed by the war. Living and working with good friends, she is happier than she has been for years. Yet Peggy’s life is not the only one changed by the war. Her daughter, Rusty, has just returned from the U.S., where she has been living as an evacuee for the last five years. After so long abroad, her home in England has become unrecognizable. Just as Peggy begins to restore normal family bonds, her husband returns from the war, damaged and desperate to make everything as it was before. Adapted from the novel by Michelle Magorian, author of Goodnight, Mister Tom, Back Home is the story of a family who struggle to make sense of their new lives in a world irrevocably altered by the far-reaching effects of war.
Acting
Sarah Lancashire's restrained devastation in every polite smile
Production
Painstaking post-war Britain detail that feels lived-in, not museum-piece
Director
Simon Massey
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Michelle Magorian wrote this after Goodnight, Mister Tom specifically to explore women's war experience—she considered the home front 'the forgotten battlefield.'
The 'five-year evacuee' phenomenon affected over 3 million British children; many returned with American accents and permanent emotional displacement that families simply... didn't discuss.
GB
