Bo and the Spirit World is a 10-part BBC fantasy television series about Chinese sisters who are transported into a magical world while on a school trip. They develop super powers and become warriors on a mission to save the planet.
'It's a sort of young Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Spirited Away: a good-versus-evil epic struggle inspired by Chinese mythology and folklore,' explains its creator, Jo Ho, 31. 'I'd love audiences in Hong Kong and on the mainland to view it. That would be something my mother would be very proud of.'
Ho was raised in Dagenham, Essex, in England, after her parents moved there from Kowloon. 'Life for my parents in England was tough,' she says. 'They divorced and it was left up to my mother to raise me and my brother.
'I'm very proud of her for managing as well as she did in a strange country where she didn't speak the language very well and had no family around to help.'
In order to complete university, Ho had to work to supplement her income. 'Thank God for student loans and grants or I'd never have made it through,' she says.
Ho's work ethic and determination were tested again when she decided to become a writer.
