AT THE LIBRARY

September 12, 2008

History Meets Reality on DVD

The following audio/visual materials are available to library patrons and may be checked out from the main library.

In the first of the following historical recreations available from PBS Home Video, the Bowlers, a contemporary British family of six, go back in time – to the year 1900, to be exact. More than fifty families in England applied to be a part of this documentary in which one modern family is plucked from present-day life to live in a suburban London home painstakingly replicated to be "ordinary," by 1900 standards. Along with the right to reside in this museum-like house comes the challenge of living under the conditions of the period. The family learns to live without current conveniences and endures life in a home complete with an outdoor toilet and a lack of central heating and electricity. The 1900 House becomes fascinatingly real as this documentary mixes history with reality and home improvement television!

This time around, over three hundred families in England vied for the chance to experience life in a 1940s London household. This experiment takes things a step further, into a time of war. The Hymers family – a long-married couple, their divorced daughter, and her two boys – were chosen to spend two months living just as British families did during World War II. Throughout the documentary, they face obstacles such as blackouts, air raids, rationing of everything including food (which ultimately leads to hunger), volunteering to help the war effort, building a bomb shelter, and more. Realistic to the smallest detail, the family dresses in 1940s attire, uses 1940s transportation, and shops in a recreated 1940s store – all as modern-day London hustles around them.

Crossing the Atlantic from England to a remote part of Maine, seventeen people from the United States and Great Britain were chosen to participate in this recreation of Colonial life, circa 1628. Over the course of four months, the participants experience life as the colonists did – from appointing roles, such as governor and lay preacher, to encountering natives and harvesting food. Challenges explored in this series include personal and collective tensions as well as day-to-day obstacles such as severe weather and hard labor. This American series includes eight episodes, on two discs.

Another replication of early American life, this series of six episodes explores the frontier, in Montana. Three American families were selected to travel west, as 19^th-century settlers, or "homesteaders." Each family is given a unique "profile," or story, equating them with a typical frontier family. The Clunes, for instance, are given the background of Irish-Americans who made their fortune in the Gold Rush. After training and a two-day wagon trip, the families settle into one-room log cabins along a beautiful creek, experiencing the same trials and discoveries as the frontier's original settlers.

Traveling back in time again to early 1900s England, this house comes with a twist – a class system. In this Edwardian-era manor house, the inhabitants are divided into three groups: the family (aristocrats), the upper servants, and the lower servants. We are introduced to the Olliff-Cooper family, a real-life British family, who, for three months, will live as aristocracy did at the time. Edgar, the butler, is the senior staff member. Mrs. Davies, the housekeeper, is responsible for all female servants. Lower servants include footmen, kitchen maids, and housemaids. All twelve servants are real-life volunteers, who quickly learn their individual places (and often resent them) in this social experiment that emphasizes the importance of social status in this era. The series includes six episodes, on three discs.