Britain’s Channel Four produced this history-laden twist on a reality show. In it, a real-life family volunteers to live for three months in a turn-of-the-century home. However, this home is not merely Victorian by show. A team of workers strips the home of all post 1900 conveniences, appliances, decor, and comforts. The family must live as an actual Victorian-era middle class family would have in 1900s London.

One DVD contains all four parts of this series, totaling to about four hours. Part I has to do mostly with the historical renovation and the family selection. To me, the most interesting bit about part one was seeing how dangerous a Victorian home actually was. Burnings, explosions, etc were a common occurence, one that killed one in four children in early childhood. The producers had their work cut out for them in making the Victorian home authentic without posing a signficant risk to the family who is to live in the home.

Part II was about the family adjusting to their new life (and accompanying new stresses and difficulties) in their new period environment. A lot of difficulties and household discourt rested on one trivial matter, as is what usually happens in our day and age. Unlike our day and age, this provocative matter was the operation of the range, which ruled how comfortable they would be pretty much the entire day and night.

Part III focused on the enormous amount of dull yet heavy responsibilities the Victorian woman faced. If she did not have a maid, cleaning the dust and ash from the burners took literally most of the day. Laundry took up three days of the week. The lady of the house wrestled with issues related to maids and other women’s issues of the time.

Part IV had to do with entertainment and leisure in the period. It also was the wrap up section. This was my least favorite part of the four, but it was still watchable.

On the whole, I found this reality show interesting, much more so because it had an actual living family thrust into somewhat of a time machine. It is amazing to see how much has changed in a little over a hundred years. Also, this made it easier to see that Victorian people were people just like us. Images from old magazines, books, and writings may make it seem like turn-of-the-century people lived in a fluffy, romantic world full of decorum and social graces. Maybe they did to a small extent, but people are people. People a century ago had to have been pretty much the same as people today. The written world is not always a mirror to reality.