Edwardian Farm - 12:38AM, 2010/04/14
Last year the BBC broadcast a series called “Victorian Farm”, which featured people attempting to live life as it would have been lived on a Victorian era farm for a year. Unlike shows like Colonial House and Frontier House, the people involved are professionals — archaeologists and historians — so they go into it with enthusiasm that doesn’t die out the first time they’re expected to shovel cow patties.
In fact, they are refreshingly excited about the experience, and while it’s obvious that this is real and very difficult work, they seem to be enjoying themselves at it in a thoroughly geeky fashion. Plus, they are able to explain what they are doing to the viewer, and the emphasis here is on doing it the correct historical way, not improvising as a modern person thrown back in time.
Anyway, after Victorian Farm ended, I found out that the same people had been involved in an earlier series about a Stuart era Farm, called Tales from the Green Valley. It took me a whole year to manage to get hold of it, but I’ve finally been able to watch that one.
And so I’m very excited to find that they’ve commissioned a new series about an Edwardian Farm. 12 60-minute episodes this time, which will be grand. I’m guessing we won’t see it until the end of 2010 at the earliest, given the necessary time frames, but at least I know it’s coming!