A few more articles about Banished and the making of the series, have been shared online. Banished starts tomorrow night, on BBC2 at 9pm.

One of the first production decisions taken was that all of the exteriors would be shot on location in Sydney, before relocating to Manchester to film the interior scenes. Giving a tour of the set, production designer Claire Kenny explains that the tents and wooden buildings that have been constructed in Manchester are a third larger than their Australian counterparts, to allow more room for cameras to move inside. She says the interiors are "historically accurate" because the settlers who left Britain in 1787 kept a detailed inventory of everything they took on the long voyage. BBC

Appearances can be deceptive, especially in television. Jimmy McGovern’s new drama Banished is set in 1788, when the first penal colony was being established at Sydney Cove, Australia. But watch carefully. The rough-sawn timber house of Captain Arthur Phillip, the first governor of the colony, is in Australia. Exteriors were filmed in a reconstructed convict camp at Manly Dam, a reservoir and bushland reserve in Sydney’s northern beaches. But when Phillip steps inside his house, you’re in a former abattoir in Manchester: all interiors were filmed in the UK. It’s somehow appropriate that every time a scene changes from interior to exterior the audience, unbeknown to them, are instantaneously shifted more than 10,000 miles. This is a drama that crosses continents both in the way it was made and the story it tells. “It’s been around for a long time,” says McGovern. Indeed, its origins lie in a writing partnership he struck with Australian writer Mac Gudgeon some years ago. Plans for a BBC drama that would switch between the perspectives of the convicts and the Aborigines fell apart, but McGovern remained wedded to the story of Australia’s first hangman. “I’m glad I kept it because I’ve got hours of that story now – it’s no longer just about the hangman, but the convicts and soldiers who had to guard them. And it’s much better for that.” Broadcast Now

Imagine what it would be like to start all over again, in an alien world, with an unfamiliar climate and build a new community from scratch. Luckily you don't have to join the suicidal crew of the Mars One mission to find out. This week on BBC2, a new drama series explores a similar scenario which took place right here on Earth, back in January 1788 when 1,000 British convicts, marines and seamen landed in New South Wales. The penal colony they built there is the setting for Jimmy McGovern’s new seven-part drama, Banished. The Independent