I must confess I’m very excited about this one while I really shouldn’t be.

The name reminds me of ‘The 1900 house’, still one of the best in its genre, but it also takes place in Wales which makes me think of the also excellent Coal House series.

But I don’t think this new show was made by the same team so I have no reason to have extra high hopes.

Mind you, life on an island over a century ago at least is a lot more interesting than what teenagers experienced at school in the 1990s.

But that’s of course just my personal opinion.

Let’s hope I won’t be disappointed.

Anyway, lets go.

The introduction gives hope though, we see fishers at sea and are explained what will be happening in this show;

Four families are going to live like a small fishing community on an island just like people did around 1900 for a month.

That all sounds amazing and the location is awe inspiring.

Mind you, a month isn’t very long, but I’m already jealous of everyone involved.

I would have loved to take part in this… actually I would have loved to do this permanently.

There are a few shots of what we’re about to see, just enough to give you a taste but unfortunately also a few spoilers.

I’ll never understand why they do this with every TV show these days.

Dear TV makers, I do not want to know what is going to happen in a later episode, they’re called spoilers for a reason!

To avoid these, skip to 2:00

Time for the adventure to start.

Nobody has lived here for 70 years, I’m not sure if I believe that but it is quite a shame.

I would if I could.

We get introduced to the families, there are a bunch of ridiculously adorable children taking part.

One of the families speaks Welsh, I love that, it is a beautiful language and it adds to the atmosphere in this show, on top of that this too makes me think back to the Coalhouse series.

We’ve only met this people minutes ago but I already have favourites, how silly is that?

I love how diverse the group is, from young to old, large families, young couples, from different backgrounds.

The adults seem to have good heads on their shoulders and a healthy interest in history but there is also a bit of nostalgia and naivety about what they’re about to experience, which of course makes things even more interesting.

Someone who knows exactly what to expect will react differently to hard 1900 life than someone who has romantic ideas of what it will be like.

As the family gets closer to the island the weather gets stormy, this is quite an exciting and unexpected start for the contestants I reckon.

The location is absolutely stunning, beaches, rocks, hills, fields and there a few small houses, built right next to each other.

And it looks so cold and wet and especially windy!

My kind of weather but I wonder if it will drive the families mad after a while.

The cottages look fantastic.

They’re rather nice, perhaps a bit too nice for fishing families?

Mind you they look great and of course being rather remote they’re rather suitable for this tv show.

They look great on the inside.



I am sad though that as with most shows these days the preparation phase is not shown.

It would have been great to see a team of decorators, historians and set dressers descent on the island to prepare these cottages for the families, see them turn these houses back to what they looked like a century ago, looking for furniture, buying props and doing tons of history.

Those stairs are steep, thankfully health & safety officers, insurance pen pushers and production wimps kept their mouths shut.

The bedrooms are tiny and uncomfortable, especially for a family with many kids, these people are going to suffer.

Excellent.

The Davies family has had it tough, mind you, 21st century tough is of quite a different scale to 1900 tough.

Nevertheless, once you’ve experienced poverty of the modern or old fashioned type, it stays with you.

Not being able to pay bills, being scared of people you owe money to, you’ll never forget and I reckon this may come to haunt them during the show, in a good or bad way.

But it will also help them.

The young John couple, young as in not having been together very long, of course have a lot more space to themselves.

But it also means they get an emptier house, they just wouldn’t have many possessions.

I love how the production team has thought about all this.

The Power family has quite a nice large house in 2019, but I think their 1900 cottage looks a lot cosier.

The Barker couple are the oldest, they get a nice cottage with plenty of space and nice stuff, it represents what they might have collected and earned after a long life.

Mrs. Barker has been talking about knitting for everyone and looking after other people’s children since before they left home.

Brilliant attitude and I reckon she might get quite busy in 1900!

Mind you, they’ve retired, their children have left home a long time ago and they seem to be enjoying the good life, this may make adapting to their new situation a little harder.

I love, love love that Mr. Barker suggest taking up smoking pipe for a while, I hope he means it.

Smoking would be such a bit part of life back then, go on, go for it, you can go back to being healthy later.

Having people smoke pipe in the evening by the fireplace would add so much atmosphere!

Time to get changed!

Modern clothes are replaced with Victorian clothes, of course we laugh at the big bloomers but I still reckon they all look a lot nicer in those old clothes than they do in the modern stuff.

Poor little girl doesn’t like the old clothes, they’re itchy.

I remember going to a historical event with a girl who swore she couldn’t wear wool because itching drove her mad, unfortunately woollen clothes were all we had and all she got, it was that or go home.

She wore it.

She got used to the itching, after the weekend she never had problems with itchy clothes again.

I always wonder how much women actually dressed like we think we did in those remote little communities.

Sure they all were supposed to wear all those layers and corsets and the like, but what if they didn’t?

Would their neighbours actually care, would they not be used to seeing each other walk around in their night gowns now and then already, would it really be a big deal i they didn’t wear what they should?

I don’t know, but I’m glad the women in this show are, for starters, made to wear the full outfits.

I wonder if in a few days or weeks perhaps those standards are going to slip, just like, I think, they might have slipped in those real 1900 communities.

Anyway, as difficult and uncomfortable these clothes at first appear, they do look amazing and of course our ancestors were not crazy, fashion mad or overly vain, everything they wear they wear for a reason.

Ok, one mistake… that is a modern cardboard matchbox, not a proper antique wooden one.

Sorry, I can’t help myself.

But… BUT they are actually using a proper Victorian range!

With proper coal and real hot fire!

Are you paying attention ‘Back in time for…’ production team?

Remember how in that show they created fake old looking ranges because of “health and safety”?

I guess those rules don’t apply to Wales or something?

I truly LOVE that they’re going to warm their houses and cook the authentic way, as it should be!

It will ad SO much to their experience, the atmosphere and well… the difficulties!

I shouldn’t be excited about this but having seen other shows mess this up has made me very happy to see this show do it properly.

Mind you, I am not sure that kettle is authentic, perhaps that’s why they covered the handle up…

I guess the experience has now officially begun.

I did miss a little bit of a go-moment.

They arrived, went indoors, got started.

I would have liked to perhaps see the families one more time in their modern clothes posing outside their cottage and then what they look like in their Victorian clothes.

Candles and lanterns will be used for lighting, will the production team manage to avoid using big bright film lights or be at least subtle with their extra lights when filming?

This has ruined the atmosphere on more than one occasion in other shows.

I find it hard to believe they are going to leave a candle or oil lamp on in the children’s bedroom, so this is possibly a crew light, but it is done pretty subtle and everything else is still rather dark.

With this location, those props, these people and the historical costumes, every shot is gorgeous and looks like a painting.

Lucky camera people!

The weather is very stormy, so no fishing, this gives the families at least some time to settle in.

The people have to brave the elements every time they need to visit the toilet, get coal or water and of course many of these jobs will have to be done by the children.

I love this scene in the children’s bedroom, I don’t see any electrical lights, no modern blankets hidden away, they’re sharing a little bowl of water, helping each other and I think they’re using tooth powder in stead of paste.

Very good!

I’d love to see all those little items in greater detail though.

The children seem to adapt pretty fast.

I’m not sure how common these enamel mugs were, I knew they excised and I know they’re used for countless historical productions because you can still get them.

But I reckon there would have been a bigger diversity of mugs and cups.

The modern kettle is used to pour hot water in a modern pan.

That is a shame, surely you can find old pots, pans and kettles in shops across the country.

They don’t seem hard to find to me.

Is this perhaps a hygiene thing?

Although indeed women & girls were supposed to do household chores, there have always been families that adapted to what had to be done in stead of how society expected them to do things.

A husband helping out wouldn’t have been a big deal.

The families have been given some food and money, but they have to be frugal.

Not having to go fishing is nice but they’ll be running out of food and money soon if the weather doesn’t change.

At this point I am wondering how well the families already know each other and when they’ll get a little closer to each other.

I missed them checking out each others homes, introducing themselves, etc.

Poor Mr. Barker has gout, very authentic.

He is lucky he doesn’t have to work, just when I start to wonder if he still is supposed to be working we’re told that indeed he now can’t fish.

Which is disastrous.

Poor Mr. Barker.

We find out that there is a village bakery.

Village is a bit of a grand name for a row of 4 houses, but I love that they’ve got one baker.

That makes sense, baking would take up so much of your time as a housewife that it would be smart to just have one person bake for all.

Here by the way we already see that cliche of women only being housewives while the men went out to work busted.

Many, if not most working class women had jobs, often at home, but not always.

The double income families were common, people didn’t have much of a choice.

There is also a small shop, another job for a woman.

This job may bring a lot of tension with it in the future.

After all her customers are her neighbours, what if they can’t pay their bills but are hungry?

The Barkers run a little tavern in the community hall in the evenings, I wonder how common this was in an area with only 4 houses.

Wouldn’t they just do this in their own home?

The Johns have chickens to look after.

I like how all the families have been given a job on the side.

The Johns are in a very good position, no children, almost free eggs they can sell for a penny a piece.

Are people already getting a little jealous?

Day 3, still no fishing weather.

The families are running out of food.

I love how quickly this adventure is getting harsh.

With 7 mouths to feed things get bad quickly at the Davies household.

Mrs Davies already has sleepless nights and is worried sick about, well about everything.

We’re introduced to a new face, Joe the Shipwright.

He’ll be working in the boat shed and brought a lovely dog!

More importantly to the families, he may have work for the men on days when the weather is too rough to go fishing.

The shed looks wonderful, another painting.

Mr. John really does have the right attitude for this situation, within minutes he is helping the Shipwright out, working on a relationship that may help him getting a paid job,

Fantastic, no (noticeable) artificial lights indoors, what a brave camera crew, what a brave producer.

Let’s just show how dark it is, no need for more light.

Check out all the other series and even some major films and you’ll see how rare it is for people to film actual dark scenes.

I love this, it adds so much to the atmosphere, it helps us viewers understand so much better what the evenings are like there.

The storm finally seems to have died down just when the food situation is getting desperate.

This means the men can finally go fishing!

Time for the men to say goodbye.

I come from a seafaring family, not that long ago my ancestors would have experienced this.

And although of course for this tv show the risks are relatively small, as viewers we realise that if this really was 1900, the risks would be substantial.

Health and safety seems to have insisted on the men wearing modern but reasonably subtle life jackets.

Which visually is a shame but at least this concession to modernity is totally understandable and not one I can blame them for.

And bravo to the production team by sharing this with the viewer, they point out the modern life jackets in stead of hoping we don’t notice them.

This is all as it should be done, very good.

The boat looks wonderful and the fishing is done historically accurate, very nice.

Of course first valuable time has to be wasted teaching these men how things work.

They better learn fast, their families are hungry.

The men also have to get used to being at sea, I’ve sailed and am very lucky and a little proud that I’ve never been seasick.

I like to think it is in my DNA.

Oops, those aren’t historically accurate shoe soles.

Might want to try and keep those out of frame camera man or perhaps cut it out in post production editor?

Back home the families wait, no idea when the crew returns, if they’ll bring any food at all.

The uncertainties, the worries, it’s all getting real now.

To make up for the modern shoe soles they’re wearing traditional oilskin jackets to keep dry, wonderful!

The weather is getting rough and here comes breakfast back…

It is quite sobering and depressing when we learn that fish stock has fallen by 94% since then, what have we humans done to our planet?

Of course besides ruining the planet, this has also made things extra hard for our 1900 fishermen.

There’s no fish, they’re going home empty handed to hungry families.

The families are so excited, this is painful, you really feel for these people.

Morale goes down the drain.

The women are going cockling, another wonderful scene but a tough job.

After a long walk with a heavy cart they arrive at the beach where the cockles may be living.

The women aren’t having any luck, the job looks more difficult than it seems.

But then they find mussels!

The day is saved.

Time to clean the mussels, quite a hard job.

I love seeing Mr. Barker with proper old fashioned glasses, you’d be surprised how often they just use modern glasses that just look a bit retro for shows like these.

Mr. John is paid in goods for his work, food & pepper, nice!

This really is getting into the right spirit of things.

I don’t know how much of all this is totally spontaneous or where the director has subtly pushed people in the right direction to make this happen, but it works.

Of course this is where the division and envy begins.

Yes, the other families now say that they’d always share everything but it isn’t them who have something valuable that everybody wants.

But this is how it would have been!

One strong community, always share everything… but not always… and sometimes hiding stuff from your neighbours… sometimes selling it… wonderful!

The fishmonger is coming, will they make some money?

The haggling is merciless, the fishmonger is great, he plays his part well and takes his buying seriously without being unpleasant.

What a character.

Seeing them trade is a delight!

And this is where episode 1 ends.

What a lovely show!

Finally we get something where a lot of thought has been put into the idea but also realisation.

No cheap alternatives or excuses, no easy one in a dozen formula we’ve seen done before, no fake scenes, no trying to squeeze 5 decades into a few episodes, no lack of immersion because people go do modern things when the camera’s aren’t rolling.

I don’t want to be mean but I’d rather have one of these than another 10 of the ‘Back in time for’ series.

The families in the 1900 island are wonderful and they’re actually living the life of our ancestors in stead of just playing scenes.

This is a full time experience that will teach them unique and amazing experiences.

And it is a joy to watch.

Of course there are a few little bits here and there that could have been done better but there are so few, it is nothing compared to many other shows like this.

And it is totally out balanced by the work and effort put into making this show better than the others.

I’m especially impressed with the dark scenes.

I’ve still not really seen any community activities though, what do they all do in the evenings?

Do they use the community hall, do they all stay in their own homes, do they visit each other?

We also haven’t really seen them interact at the shop yet.

But this was only the first episode.

Nevertheless I can already say this one is a gem.

THIS is what we lovers of Historical Reality TV want, this is the real deal, it is indeed of the same level as ‘The 1900 house’, ‘Edwardian Manor house’, the Coal house series, etc.

Keep it up.

Can’t wait for the next episode.