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 — and now I have my DVD set from Amazon on the way. Pretty much every day I get into a conversation with someone about whether “times are worse today than they were for our parents and/or [fill in the blank to any decade past]”. I have my *opinions*, but I have not dug up actual facts to support my own personal hypothesis. Even before I would, though, I’d want to discuss: What specific aspects of life are we going to measure to determine what may be *better*, exactly, or what may be *worse*? We need to have a discussion around these assumptions and parameters first, I think, to then be able to measure and compare now vs. then.
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.