Friday 19 February 2016

342 Living In The Past




First  viewed :  Early  1978

This  was  not  something  I  watched  by  choice. In  the  spring  term  of   my  second  and  final  year  at  St  Wilfrids  School,  the  shorter  of  the  two  "Art "  periods    ( Thursday  afternoons  if  I  recall  correctly  ) was  taken  up  instead  by  a  lesson  with  deputy  head  Frank  Randle.  Randle  was  a  cantankerous  martinet  with  no  sense  of  humour  but  these  lessons  did  show  a  mellower  side  of  him. They  were  sometimes  described  as  "Logic" but  were  in  fact  pretty  free form  i.e  he'd  talk  about  anything  that  interested  him  at  the  time. However  in  the  term  my  group  had  him  he  didn't  do  much  talking  , just  slipped  in  a  VHS  tape  ( rare  at  the  time  )  of  this , recorded  from  the  TV.  I  never  found  it  very  interesting  but  it  was  an  undemanding  lesson.

Nevertheless,  Living  In  The  Past , was  a  ground-breaking  and  influential  series, the  forerunner  to  all  those  historical  hardship  reality  series  like  The  1900s  House  and  the  currently  running  10,000  BC.   There's  also  a  clear  linkage  to  Castaway  , nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  later.  15  volunteers  ( including  three  children  )  were  selected  to  live  as  an  Iron  Age  community  for  a  year  in  a  wood  clearing  in  Dorset. Though  allowed  some  modern  tools  and  supplies  to  get  them  through  the  winter  the  volunteers  were  required  to  become  self-sufficient  in  time.

This  being  a  more  innocent  age  the  participants  were  selected  more  for  their  aptitude  than  any  telegenic  qualities. There  was  no  Ben  Fogle  Adonis  figure  hogging  the  camera  here,  just  some  taciturn  beardy  guys  and  unmade  up  ladies   getting  on  with  the  hard  grind  of  sustaining  themselves. There  was  a  bit  of  casual  nudity  in  the  warmer  months  but  nothing  prurient. None  of  the  participants  went  on  to  have  TV  careers  though  some  of  their  children  participated  in  a  poorly-received  follow-up  show  Surviving  in  the  Iron  Age  in  2001.

    

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