When I was a child at school, the high spot of the week was 'television time', where we would watch a programme entitled "
How We Used To Live". This was a dramatization of what life in England was like from the Victoria ages until (for me) the second world war
BBC2 is currently broadcasting a series entitled '
Further Back In Time For Dinner', which is a similar thing. It's part of a long-running series, with the umbrella title of 'Back In Time For...' and the basic concept is that a normal 21st century family is given the chance to experience life in a bygone era. For this, they have to dress in the fashions of the day, drive the vehicles of the time, eat whatever would have been available and suffer the hardships and inconveniences of time gone by
Each weeks episode is based around every day being a new year, so the first week would be the 1950's, then the second week being the 1960's etc, showing the changes that happen to everyday objects (home decor, attitudes towards people, inventions etc) and how they impact on the average person
Previous series have been:
- Back In Time For Dinner, where a family (two parent and their three children) experienced food and happenings between the 1950's and 'the future'
- Back In Time For Christmas, showing the differences between Christmas celebrations between the 1940's - the 1990's
- Back In Time For The Weekend, looking at the changes in leisure time between the 1950's and 'the future'
- Back In Time For Brixton, which took a black British family back to the 1940's when the first Caribbean immigrants came to England, and showing what changes they would have encountered up to the 1990's
The current series is 'Further Back In Time For Dinner', which sees the family living thru the 1900's up until the 1950's. [The most recent episode featured the 1930's]
I'm really enjoying it. Not only as a piece of entertaining television, but also as a nostalgia trip, recognizing things that my parents and grandparents used to have around their homes, and simple things like seeing tins of food from the 1930's, and noticing how much they have changed (and sometimes stayed the same) over time