If we are all happy living in Britain, you wouldn't guess it from the glut of relocation shows hogging our screens: A Place in the Sun, Get a New Life, I Want That House, No Going Back... Fifteen years after Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, it seems we are more desperate than ever for a life abroad - from Costa Rica to the Costa del Sol, Canada to the Caribbean.
Blame it on the weather; blame it on work woes: three million viewers tuned in to the first series of Get a New Life, screened on BBC2 in 2002. 'The programmes clearly tapped in to a national psyche - a dream to downshift, to spend more time with the children,' says series editor Susannah Walker. She was astonished at the volume of answers to a viewer poll commissioned to coincide with the second series: 'We received 4,500 replies. I've never had that kind of response even on a mainstream BBC programme. The most I've ever got was 1,000 for Changing Rooms.'
It's certainly a hot topic: according to mortgage lender Halifax, every year an estimated 300,000 Britons leave home for new places, prompted by factors including the promise of sunshine and better food, not to mention the spoils of a (to date) buoyant UK property market.
According to Walker, there are two distinct reasons for wanting to emigrate: one is predominantly entrepreneurial - the desire for a better job and standard of living somewhere English-speaking, such as Australia or New Zealand. The other concerns 'downshifting', the search for a genuine relaxed lifestyle and a dash of culture - usually somewhere within the EU.
Once it was France or bust, but it has been overtaken by Spain - in particular the Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol, not least because mortgages are cheaper than in the UK. 'With the rise of the low-cost airlines it's easy to get there,' explains Katie Pownall, author of No Going Back: Buying Abroad, which accompanies the Channel 4 series of the same name.
Making a living within the EU is relatively simple: one of the most popular options is to rent out a gîte or similar accommodation, which provides a guaranteed income. There is no need for qualifications and acquiring a work permit is a formality.
It is a different thing further afield: in Australia, for instance, you have to have a business plan and know what you are going to do before you are considered. You also need to possess a skill or to fit certain immigration criteria. On the other hand in Goa, which is also known as the new Costa del Sol for semi-retirees, relocating is relatively hassle-free provided investment is made in a trade, such as a bar.
Pownall warns against imagining a new life abroad as all sunsets: 'It is an illusion that you can leave everything behind and that all will be perfect. You are rolling all the most stressful things you can do into one: changing your job, your home and your country. And you take with you the person you are. You can't leave that behind.'
