Homebodies Sbs: Meeting the ghost of your teenage self in a small-house drama
On a rain-slicked drive into a coastal town, a young man unlocks the house where every photograph seems to hold two faces. In homebodies sbs the living and the remembered collide: Darcy finds his mother speaking with the teenage version of himself, a ghost who is mischievous, loud and impossibly present. The scene—an angled shot of a framed portrait catching a reflected, changed face—sets the emotional weather for the series.
What is Homebodies Sbs about?
The series follows Darcy, a young trans man who returns to his childhood town after his mother experiences a health scare. The household he re-enters is populated by ordinary objects that now feel charged—an old bedroom, a mantel with photographs, a soundscape that shifts into strange, disquieting noises. Darcy discovers Nora, his mother, speaking with the ghost of his pre-transition self, Dee, a presence who describes themself as a “ghost, spirit, unresolved trauma – pick your fave. ”
How does the show use the supernatural to explore family and identity?
Creator Pobjoy, creator and writer, uses the language of the supernatural not for cheap thrills but as a lens on memory, identity and the fraught intimacy between parent and child. “It’s about a mother and son who love each other but don’t always know how to communicate, ” Pobjoy said, describing the series as focused on “the complexity of parental grief” and on “what happens next, rebuilding relationships, redefining home, and integrating the parts of himself he thought he had to leave behind. ” Those are the stakes the ghost amplifies: is the apparition the past literally returned, or the mother’s inability to let go?
Visually and sonically the show leans into that unsettled border. The soundtrack introduces strange sounds that suggest reality is shifting; the camera frames moments—such as the photograph catch of reflected selves—to make visible the simultaneity of pre- and post-transition identities. The young ghost Dee is both comic and destabilizing, stealing a car, agitating family routines and forcing intimate conversations that might otherwise never happen.
Who brings the story to life, and what do they say?
Luke Wiltshire plays Darcy and Claudia Karvan plays Nora; Jazi Hall appears as Dee. Every episode was directed by Harry Lloyd except episode two, which was directed by Pobjoy, and episode five, which they co-directed. Claudia Karvan, who plays Nora, described the series as “a love letter to the parent, ” and spoke about the parental transition from being the boss to learning to “have faith that they’re doing the right thing. ” Those reflections mirror the drama’s quieter scenes: a parent balancing grief for who their child once was with the tenderness of learning who they are now.
The structure of the series—six short episodes that can also be viewed as a one-hour special—helps sustain a compressed, intimate tone. Simple, melancholic dialogue often carries the emotional weight: when Nora says, “I’m not really sure who you look like now, ” Darcy replies, “I look like me, ” and that exchange frames the series’ central emotional negotiation.
homebodies sbs draws its tensions from everyday details and from the decision by the creative team to let the supernatural be both literal and metaphorical. The result is a piece of storytelling that treats transition, memory and parental love with equal measures of strangeness and care.
Back in the house where the episode began, the rain has eased but the photograph on the mantel still holds two faces. The final shots leave the question open—will the past fade, or will Nora and Darcy learn to live with multiple versions of the same life? The answer hangs in the house, where ordinary objects continue to hum with memory and possibility.
