Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13002

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Channel 4 presents The Edwardian Country House, a gripping new series which brings class to reality television. Nineteen volunteers from the modern world, find that life of a grand country house in the early 20th century is plagued by all-too familiar themes: money, power and position.

Taking Manderston, an authentic Edwardian pleasure palace in the Scottish Borders, a family of five and a newly formed staff of 14, this six-part series turns back the clock to recreate life as it was for the new rich and their servants during the halcyon period in British social history before the First World War. Everything is quintessentially British: a magnificent house and boating lake, model dairy and tea room, croquet and tennis in the garden, a stable full of horses and carriages - and a group of people utterly divided and ruled by class.

The People

Our modern family upstairs, the Olliff-Coopers, have been taken away from the stresses and strains of modern life to a world where everything is done for them. Attending to their every whim and desire is a team of 14 staff who will do everything for them from picking up clothes to brushing down horses.

All the staff downstairs are volunteers with no experience of working as a servant in a 'big house'. The butler and the housekeeper have been given some training in their duties and it is their responsibility to turn their fellow recruits into a crack team of country house servants: an efficient, discreet and respectful machine. The household is privileged to have an Edwardian status symbol - a French chef!

For three months, the household functions as it would have done in pre-First World War England. Every participant in the experiment has agreed not just to live with Edwardian technology, but to abide by Edwardian standards of behaviour and to adapt to a complicated set of rules that governs everything in their daily lives.

The House Hierarchy

Overarching these rules is an intricate pecking order, which firmly places everybody in the house in a set social position and decides every aspect of life - who can initiate conversation, who has pudding at lunch, who can have a bath and when. The hierarchy is all-important amongst the servants, but it is most obvious in the division between family and staff.

Fraternisation is not allowed between the two groups. The staff's sole purpose in life is to serve the family. These rules are firmly enforced and deeply engrained in the structure of the household. Everyone from the maid in the scullery to the master in the study will act in a fashion appropriate to his or her status.

How will each of the 21st century volunteers react to a social structure where there is a place for everyone and everyone knows their place?

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location: the heart of an awl
Posts: 3692

that sounds great. i don't usually like "reality tv," although i did manage to get sucked in to Real World LA and Love Cruise. This sounds like Merchant-Ivory meets Bunim-Murray. awesome.

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Registered: Jan 2001
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Posts: 1163

Crazy. That's like the upcoming show based on a psychological experiment from the 70's where a fake prison situation is played out between 'guards' and 'prisoners' who are, when they start out, students and peers from university. A vast psychological divide will I'm sure appear leading to riviting television and hilarious circumstances.

Soon, for the summer schedule, rich people with power and starving, uneducated nations are cast against each other in a hilarious yet insightful half hourly nightly show in which the entire human race becomes spiritually corrupt.

I WANT MORE CHEAP SHIT ON MY TELEVISION TO DISTRACT ME FROM WORLD EVENTS.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Location Location
Posts: 26420

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Originally posted by Lightbulb
Crazy. That's like the upcoming show based on a psychological experiment from the 70's where a fake prison situation is played out between 'guards' and 'prisoners' who are, when they start out, students and peers from university.

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Registered: Apr 2001
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Posts: 16728

edit-
I watched one a while back about a family who had to live like 1800s in London. This house was stripped down to what it would have been back then and they had to do everything accordingly while living around others in the modern world. They were kind of excited at first but it started to get to them, the wife went to the back of the house and cried and cursed regularly. It didn’t look very fun.

Last edited by euphorbia on 05-02-2002 at 04:58 AM

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Registered: Apr 2001
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I just watched one called The Frontier House where three families lived out in Montana the same way they would have back in the frontier days (1883) and got assessed afterwards whether each family would have survived after preparing for the winter for 6 month since only one in three families made it back then.
it was very cool...poor JoJo Pumpkin :cry:
I thought a lot of their thoughts were interesting and I agree with what they said about idle/comfortable bodies and minds (they didn’t say it like that but that’s the gist) of the 21st century in America.
I think there is satisfaction in working with your hands and I cried when they had to leave what they made. I mean when I move from here I know it will be painful leaving the pear tree we planted when our son was born much less an entire house I had built with my hands.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/


Anyway, Id like to live like this for just a break from the modern for a little while, its pretty much the way we lived In Guatemala. I would have to live down south though...no harsh winter for me.

There is a lot to be said about hard work and mental health/clarity I think...but that’s another issue I guess

Last edited by euphorbia on 05-02-2002 at 04:19 AM

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: 0.50
Posts: 9355

do they get to freely fuck the help? for the sake of authenticity!

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: UK
Posts: 13002

quote:

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Originally posted by euphorbia
edit-
I watched one a while back about a family who had to live like 1800s in London.

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i remeber this one. The kids hated it by about day five

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