KEEN-EYED viewers of the new Channel 4 comedy Home will have noticed that the Syrian asylum-seeker at the centre of the plot is a middle-class Christian from Damascus.

British-Moroccan actor Youssef Kerkour plays Sami Ibrahim, an English teacher who smuggles himself over from Calais in the car boot of a family from Dorking and ends up living with them. In the heart of suburbia he encounters curiosity, welcome, prejudice, and the assumption that he must be a Muslim.

Writer and co-star Rufus Jones explains why Sami’s character is a Christian: “I thought it might be a good example of confounding expectations and showing someone’s cultural background may have commonalities in ways you don’t expect.” But, he adds, Sami’s Christianity becomes “a crucial thing as he seeks refugee status at the Home Office”.