Each week, presenter Tony Devlin will be finding out why each person came to live in Northern Ireland and asking what they have left behind in their homeland.
The series, which has been produced by Clean Slate and Motive Television for BBC Northern Ireland, features a wide range of destinations such as China, Slovakia, Venezuela and India and celebrates cultural diversity in this increasingly shrinking world.
Tony says: “More and more people are coming to live in Northern Ireland and we hope that viewers will connect with this programme as it delves beneath the surface of this increasingly multicultural identity. This series aims to deliver insights about Belfast as well as Bangalore – it’s as much about Ballymoney as Bratislava.”
In the first programme of Home From Home Tony travels to Guangzhou in South Eastern China to meet the family of Bonny Cooper. Bonny gave up a career in law in China to marry and live with a pig farmer from Northern Ireland.
Normally people leave the “middle of nowhere” in search of a new life but Bonny has done just exactly the opposite, leaving a city of nine million for a bungalow two miles outside Ballymoney.
Tony travels to the Orient to meet Bonny’s family and friends and learns just how important family is to the Chinese people. Here, Tony is taken aback by the frenzied pace of life, as he is bombarded by the traffic jams, skyscrapers, Karaoke bars and fast food joints.
Michael Quinn, Executive Producer for Clean Slate says: “Home From Home is a travel series with a heart. Not only do we discover more about the culture and homelands of our immigrant neighbours but we also find that what people have in common is a family back home that loves and misses them.”
Cormac Hargaden, Executive Producer for Motive says: “With Home From Home, we wanted to make a programme which observed and celebrated the realities of ethnic diversity in Northern Irish life.
But rather than exploring the hard edge of the immigrant experience, we deliberately approached our canvas with a light and populist touch. “By concentrating on entertainment and adventure values - with Tony Devlin travelling the globe and having a laugh - viewers can learn something new about the world and people around them, without ever having to feel like it’s a chore.
I think the programmes that we have made are an affirmative and positive portrayal of the immigrant stories and characters at the heart of our series.”
Tony Devlin, 29, is from Belfast and graduated from the Mountview Theatre School in London in 1999. Tony and has a wide range of acting credits to his name including the movies Hart’s War, Breakfast on Pluto and Titanic Town. The television programmes Band of Brothers, In Deep and his theatre credits include, Henry V, Diary of a Hungerstrike, Observe the Sons of Ulster and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Beautiful Game.