I am not quite sure how, but the other night, trolling around the vintage blogosphere, I spotted a reference to this BBC series — 1940s House
Anyway: In that vein, I love the concept of this TV series. I guess you’d call it a retro-reality show: A family is put into a constructed environment recreating what it was like to live in the midst of WWII England — housing, food, amenities, technology … or lack thereof. They must deal. I can’t wait to watch.
This show was a sequel to 1900 House (which IMHO was better) and is part of the multi-national “House” franchise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1900_House
(Longtime lurker here – couldn’t resist this post!)
BBC did this several times: 1900s House, 1940s House and Frontier House.
The concept is delicious – a submersive environment which requires the participants to live without most or all of the things they are accustomed to. There is one flaw with the series – it takes modern people and puts them into an antique environment. They react differently to the stimuli than people who lived through it – the subjects know of something different/better/other than what they are experiencing, whereas the people who lived through the time period (in this case, the 1940s) didn’t.
It becomes harder for us to judge if we’re better off now than then because we have a different perspective. People from the 1940s might actually have considered themselves better off. It becomes a very personal experience for everyone involved, and only you can decide which you think is better.
Welcome out of your lurking status, Max! I can’t wait to watch the video, and it sounds like I need to rest of the series, too!
I liked this show — it was all about rationing, as I recall. It showed how incredibly creative you had to be with menus, shopping, etc. There is a great exhibit at the Imperial War Museum in London about life in wartime Britain which shows how much food, clothing, etc. people received from the time rationing started during the war until the early 50s. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without!
I have my grandmother’s old cookbook which has a rationing supplement in it that includes menus and substitutions so you can cook without buying on the black market.
Whether things were better/worse then, I don’t know. I think there was less materialism because there was less to obtain, and houses from that period show this in the lack of closet space. Food choices/portions were likely better for you (although: aspic. Yikes.). I wouldn’t like living in a segregated society. I wouldn’t like not having air conditioning, MMR vaccinations and polio vaccines, either.
I totally agree especially on the materialism. I live in the 1950s (in my mind) and often think about that. Even in that prosperous decade, they didn’t have as much as we have now. I look at tv shows like I Love Lucy, and she wore the same dresses many times throughout the series. In one episode it showed her closet, and they were the same dress I had seen in several shows. I don’t think it would be easy for me to live without as much, because I am used to everything I have now (and a huge closet). This does sound like an interesting show, and I wouldn’t mind be part of an experiment like that.
I once read that Lucy purposely limited herself to 8 daytime dresses….as that was the average wardrobe in the 1950′s
very interesting….remember this one: The Century in Shoes
Gavin, I think you are correct. I have the I Love Lucy series seasons 1,2,and 3 on DVD and both Lucy and Ethel repeatedly wear the same dresses during each season.
Into the 1960′s you could still order food parcels from the Sear’s Christmas catalog to send to people in England. Every year when I was little I wished we could send some, odd child.
Even better–this is available right now on Netflix instant if you have it!!!
Thanks for the tip! I’ll check for the other series’, too!
it’s not showing on the instant on mine, only DVD
We watched Frontier House with our kids and it was good. We really got a feel for the hardships these pioneers faced, especially the first cold, dark winter for which they were ill-prepared. We thought it would be good for our kids because we’ve been working our way through the Little House on the Prairie series and wanted to point-out that it wasn’t quite as “cozy” as the show sometimes appears. J likes to stop the DVD and say things like “see how easy you kids have it with your video-games and central heating? I’ve never made you drop out of school to help me harvest the back 40.” They laugh at that but watching Frontier House sort of put things in a little more perspective. One thing I didn’t like, and I’m not sure if 1940′s house does this, was the MTV “Real World” style interviews with the participants, which gave it a bit of cheesy reality TVness, i.e. talking about each other, griping, etc. I will definitely check-out the 1940′s house series, though. That sounds interesting and makes for good family viewing.
Except for what I think was the last show, the “upstairs, downstairs” version, I loved this series. I especially liked the Victorian House and the 1940s House.
I loved that series. It was eye opening!
I LOVE these series! I watched Frontier House when it was on t.v., and the 1900 House on loan from the local library. It’s hard to believe what all people had to go through on a daily basis (especially in the 1900′s). I wouldn’t been able to keep a clean house without producing about 12 kids. Well, that makes since now. I particularly loved the Frontier House. I loved the one dad that lost a ton of weight by the end of the show. I think we forget how much hard labor was involved in their daily lives. I think that should be the new diet here in American. Work and eat like a pioneer, it would do us all some good.
What I liked about 1940s House, vs some of the other series, was that the family involved really tried to stay true to the experiment. During Frontier House, for example, some of the people involved were discovered to be “cheating” by salvaging modern items from a dump or buying meat from outside sources.
The family in 1940s house, by contrast, really maintained the spirit of the project and seemed to take the most with them back to modern life. I wonder if this isn’t in some part, due to the fact that they got to interact with people who actually lived during the Blitz, etc.
The spoiler is when the participants in these shows are not commited to the project. In just about every one of these series someone cheats or starts “whinging and grousing”…(as they say…..).
I think they deliberately select for a family where at least one member is grossly unprepared for the exercise. In 1900 house the mom had a meltdown on Day 3. Meanwhile, I’m sitting there saying “Seriously, you don’t know how to hand wash something?” It makes for better TV if there’s some disconnect between their abilities and the requirements.
I agree – the 1940s house mom nearly lost it when she couldn’t get her requisite amount of cigarettes. I finally stopped watching because she was so whiny throughout the series. Why audition for a show you have no skills for?
Yes: Conflict makes for more “entertainment”, I guess….
i would volunteer for 1960s house, if it meant i could drink and smoke at work, then spend all weekend playing golf and smoking and drinking.
They aired this show in Australia I found it very enjoyable. I was talking with my father the other day when we use to have manufacturing he was in the metal industry. I asked him his view of this stuff made in India or China. He said stuff is so cheap that it does not matter that it is poor quality and does not last as he can afford a lot more items. I wonder if a better standard of living was worth sacrificing our industries which I believe is much the same situation in the U.S. This is just food for thought as I believe there is no clear yes or no to the issue.
This made me suddenly remember my childhood, dad fixing things when they broke. We couldn’t afford to buy replacement, and couldn’t afford to take anything in to a shop to have it repaired. If dad couldn’t fix it, we did without. And often did without for weeks or months while dad was working on fixing it, and even then after something was fixed, wasn’t ever the same as it was before it broke. It certainly filled me with a lot of anxiety as a kid, when something broke it was bad news. I’m happy now that when something breaks I can generally afford to replace it.
Pioneer Quest: A Year in the Real West was a Canadian show I was hooked on. The mosquitoes are bad in Manitoba (and here right now as I squash one that has just bitten me)…anyway, they did a behind the scenes episode and one of the woman told the story of always hugging the director because he had bug spray on and they of course were not allowed to use it back in the day..funny.
Pioneer Quest is SO MUCH BETTER than Frontier House. Less drama, more real life and content. The people on Frontier House are pretty clueless about how to actually farm, and make no attempt to learn how to do it. They sneak in makeup and real mattresses and plow fields in nothing more than their underwear.
So yes. Pioneer Quest and Yukon Quest are MUCH better than the US House series. The UK House Series are much better, including one I’ve only seen half of, about 1930s coal mining.
Additional huge, major kudos to Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm and Victorian Pharmacy. With the exception of Pioneer Quest, these are by far much more excellent than anything listed above. And if anybody out there has a source for watching Tales From the Green Valley online I am ALL ears.
Wow — thanks for all these great lists, everyone!
I literally just finished watching this yesterday afternoon, how strange! It was really good, almost as good as Frontier House and much much better than Colonial House. I had a hard time with the accents at first, but after watching awhile, I got used to them. Twice I was literally in tears, once in empathy of an exhausted housewife who’d just had a chance to sit down and relax when the air raid siren went off and again when they showed the family listening to a real life radio news show from the ’40′s. This was balanced out with a few laugh out loud moments, the family had a great sense of humor about their situation.
Well worth watching.
Dulcie, how many episodes are there? I couldn’t actually tell this from the Amazon listing… Thanks!
It wasn’t broken up into episodes on the dvd, it was basically a 3 hour program. I took a break after the first hour, then watched the remaining 2 hours a couple days later.
thanks, Dulcie!
Sounds interesting either way. Its got to fun to watch a reality type show from another time. I’m sure today’s reality TV will seem more interesting 60 years from now!
I can’t wait to check it out. I’m living in a 1940s house (in the U.S. though), and have always wondered what it would’ve been like back in the day.
Also, just saw the movie Midnight in Paris. A major theme is nostalgia and whether things were better in the past.
Loooved 1940s House. Educational and well put-together. Fascinated me so thoroughly that I wouldn’t hesitate to sign up for a “1940s Camp” if only such a thing existed.
I remember watching the end of the 1900′s house, when the wife was doing the laundry & as she changed the load of clothes from the washer to the dryer, she said, “minimal effort, maximum result”.
I enjoyed the program, and found it to be very educational. It gave me a greater appreciation for all the conveniences of modern life.
I’m intrigued by the 1940′s house series. I love social history- especially first hand accounts. . When I visit my remaining living aunts and uncles, I love to listen to stories about their experiences with rationing in the U.S. (sugar, gasoline, nylons, dresses, and anything metal), my aunt’s harrowing experiences working in a bomb (munitions factory) and the history of my grandparent’s house (my grandfather built it in 1939 and my uncle still lives in it). Also, speaking of the Frontier House… on my dad’s side of the family I loved to hear stories from my grandmother (who passed away at 98) about being born and growing up in a “soddie” in Nebraska. I am going to order the series about the 1940′s house. It will be interesting to see how accurately they recreate the actual conditions that English families endured during those times. As far as my ideas about the past and whether things were better or not… they were simply different and each generation adapts to the circumstances that they are faced with.
LOVED that show! It really made me thankful to live in this relative peace and prosperity.
I highly recommend the Victory cookbooks from the 40′s. They are a fantastic resource if you are, say, trying to bake a cake but it turns out you only have one egg. They are also really good for info about preserving food and have tons of tips for pickling, drying, and canning.
There are some amazing web sites covering these subjects as well. Our fore mothers were endlessly creative!
Add me to the list of people who loved the 1900′s and 1940′s programs though I’m still amazed at how little knowledge they say we actually have on the day to day lives of people….I just always presumed they’d at least know most everything about the 40′s.
Personally I think they did the right thing giving away the bunnies that were left for them in their yard instead of raising them for food as many people did, I’ve no skill for killing my own food especially after raising the wee critters. Yikes.
Being born in the 50′s and growing out of those times, trust me, these times are much better even if you only use race/gender issues and medical/dental as your markers. Wonderful decor and media but real life, not that great for most people on a day to day basis. I’m pretty sure I’d have a stroke if some teacher beat my child, if I saw someone refused service because of their race or a doctor patted me on the hand and told me it was all in my mind, here’s some Valium, dear.
When I moved to Florida in ’71 there was a giant bill board along the interstate that read….”Welcome to Klan Country – help fight integration” – with a painting of a Klan member holding a little golden haired girl. I was scared for life. You could go to jail and your life destroyed for being gay. Duck and cover. McCarthy. The threat of polio….every summer. The good ol’ days are best experienced in the rear view mirror with all our rights and privileges AND the parts of the mid-century that won’t hurt you like the real estate, media and decor….asbestos aside.
Hi Just Another Pam,
I too live in Florida and I teach a diversity course at my college (College of Central Florida). I have a collection of 1940′s-60′s vacation postcards that I use in my course that feature cartoon images of young African American children climbing up palm trees chased by alligators with open mouths that say “Welcome to Florida!”. Yes, while I love some aspects of 1940′s-60′s social history, I also don’t like many including segregation and the rigid social roles of women.
P.S. Thanks for the reminders about the other negative social/historical aspects of the period. Unfortunately, many of these negative and hurtful attitudes are still present in our society almost 70 years later.
Hi Jana,
Oh, I hear you, it’s such a worry that we’re seeing more of that mind set and I’ve wondered if the internet isn’t the white hood of our time as people feel safe to say things I’d hoped were in our past.
I remember those post cards and love that you share them with the students as I think everyday items like postcards show just how ‘normal’ this kind of thing was then. In 1972 I became friends with a young woman in my classes who’d never been in a white person’s house so would only sit on the front porch.
Every now and then I watch the movie Far from Heaven which is set in 1957 and sometimes I can hardly breath I feel the ‘good ol’ days’ shown in it so deeply. The decor is outstanding though.
I too watched this and similar BBC series with much enjoyment. However in our family we all agree that it gets tiresome watching the whinging and whining of some of the participants. A case in point being the teenage daughter in one of the families on BBC Wales’ “Coalhouse at War” series. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/coalhouse2/index.shtml She refused to have her hair done in period style and constantly moaned about not being able to shower every day and the lack of cosmetics to her taste (Particularly amusing given that she wasn’t exactly “the best looking” as an Irish friend of mine puts it!) A better series of living in the past without the “reality TV” nonsense is the BBC “Victorian Farm” series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Farm where the participants are historians with some knowledge of the period and a constant enthusiasm at discovering the reality of what they have studied academically. Highly recommended and now followed with the “Victorian Pharmacy”. Excellent viewing.
There is also the Colonial house (Oprah visited the location). I’ve seen all of these House series – in fact, I ordered the 1940′s house this year for my own stash. Your local library may have copies, as well.
My beloved Green cookbook (The American Woman’s cookbook) – I have the war ration version, has a section on how to feed a family of 4 on $15 a week. Later is was $20 a week …
Am glad you discovered/mentioned these series -
I watched several of these series and what I found most interesting is in general how upset/tired/angry the women were and how satisfied the men were.
The men tended to get jobs where they built things like fences and such and many of them commented on how accomplished they felt in doing so. Understandable given that many modern day jobs don’t really produce a tangible “product.” Men, also and often, had some public citizen type jobs where the men would gather to make decisions about the community.
On the other hand, women would get breakfast made, people would eat and about the time they finished washing up that they would need to make lunch, about the time they finished lunch they would need to make dinner. In the middle of all the cooking they would have to sew, wash things, sweep, etc. Most of the women seemed to not find much satisfaction in the repeated daily tasks. In many of the series, women were also relegated to roles of silence & submission. The modern women did not like this!
When you think about the 100 year span between the 1850s& the 1950s it is pretty amazing how many inventions came out that made what was once considered “woman’s work” easier.
While I do think we can learn many things from the past–saving, growing our own food, living with less; I will take my washing machine, oven, fridge, husband that shares in these chores, etc. over the past. More importantly, I celebrate my right to vote, speak in public, and have and opinion I can voice.
I remember hearing about the colonial show and found the concept very interesting.
Related, I remember awhile back that MTV had a show in similar concept but they had young adults living in a 1970s environment. The show could’ve gone farther than what they did with it (it became more of a reality drama-filled show).
Even though the 70s may not seem that long ago for some (before my time) the technology has changed quickly enough to make it a bit harder for people to adapt backwards. I can only imagine trying to adapt to the 1800s or early 1900s, especially if they apply socioeconomic and gender roles too.
Regency House Party was another fun show. Sort of Jane Austen meets the Bachelor.
Have you all heard about this gal, Carolyn Ekins?
http://1940sexperiment.wordpress.com/
She’s using a wartime ration plan to lose weight and live more simply in the process. I’ve just started reading her blog but it sounds like she’s staying right with the strict rations and using recipes from that time. It’s pretty interesting to read about her progress.
looks very cool — i will check it out! thanks!
I think I offer a slightly different perspective than many…I grew up in central appalachia…south eastern ky, in a coal mining community. My mothers home was constructed from two old camp houses that were moved to the present locaton…check out my blog..my old ky home..and although I was born in the 60′s we didnt have plumbing, or central heat…we used pot bellied heating stoves and our fuel souce was “house coal.”. I think how very fortunate I am today, but also, how spoiled our society has become. What is now a “necessity” is quite different than what used to be. Entertainiment used to be “talking and story telling”…..our front porches were our “living rooms”..I think we have it made today…but we need to realize out very lucky we are …and learn to enjoy the simple things…just because they are wonderful!
i would just like to say how much i enjoy the 19490s, and this is from someone who lives the 1940s full time, the family was great , i would have really love to meet them, but i only find out about them , who it was all over a done,