Free time in the 1950s BBC

[Dirk Wainscotting]

For any British Loungers here. There's a programme on now (BBC2) about how we spent our free time. This time it's the 1950s.

A family has their house transformed and has to live the decade.

 

[Fading Fast]

For any British Loungers here. There's a programme on now (BBC2) about how we spent our free time. This time it's the 1950s.

A family has their house transformed and has to live the decade.

If memory serves, there were a few shows like this done +/- a decade ago, where people were sent to live in a house from a certain time period and were only allowed to use products, appliances, etc. from that time period to try to replicate what living then was like. I pretty sure I watched a show called something like "1940s House," which put people in a "normal" British home during the WWII and another called something like "Manor House, " which put people in a Downton Abbey like house in, maybe, the 1920s (or a bit earlier). They were fun shows, but contrived.

Haven't heard of the one you mentioned, but it sounds like it hasn't made it to the US yet.

 

[filfoster]

I have '1940's House' and 'Manor House' on DVD. Watched them when they aired. Incredibly harder than the folks thought it would be. There was also one set in the 1620's in New England. Think mud and cold.

 

[Fading Fast]

I have '1940's House' and 'Manor House' on DVD. Watched them when they aired. Incredibly harder than the folks thought it would be. There was also one set in the 1620's in New England. Think mud and cold.

I remember that from the shows too, very hard to live without the modern conveniences we've become used to. But that's always the case - easy to go forward to something better, hard to go back. Also, if you don't know that something better exists - and all your neighbors are living the same way you do - then it's all you know and it is how your grew up; what the people of that show were being asked was to live in that prior time period, but no one else around them was and they, of course, had grown up with more modern conveniences.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think that must be part of the vetting process for choosing contestants for these kinds of shows -- they don't want people who would have little trouble adapting, they want to exaggerate the culture shock as much as possible for showbiz reasons.

I remember watching "1940s House" and thinking that, aside from the obvious Anderson Shelter In The Middle Of The Night stuff, it wasn't all that different from what I knew in my my own youth. "So you've got to light the stove in the morning, what's the big deal?"

 

[Edward]

That makes sense, really... it wouldn't 'work' as a show at all if they selected a family of cintage enthusiasts who practically lived the forties anyhow. "Here's some Fedora Loungers forced to go without the internet for a few weeks..."

For any British Loungers here. There's a programme on now (BBC2) about how we spent our free time. This time it's the 1950s.

A family has their house transformed and has to live the decade.

Is itg that same family that they did this with for the Christmas shows that ran from the forties to the nineties? That one was great. Hadn't really realised before just how much my concept of Christmas is rooted in my seventies early-childhood.

 

[Dirk Wainscotting]

It's a different family. The ones you are referring to, who were eating the food from the different eras, were perhaps the most well-adjusted family I've ever seen on a television programme like this. The family they have doing the 'free time' are also pretty normal; not your usual noisome twerps they involve in 'reality shows'.

I came from such a backward rural area in Blighty that my childhood might as well have been the 1950s rather the 70s/80s....

Anyway, the second episode is on tomorrow night and it's already the 1960s!