Guest Author - Joanna Czechowska
I love history – I took a degree in medieval history and archaeology and an MA in history at London university. So it stands to reason I adore historical programmes. The BBC1 series Who Do You Think You Are? starts its sixth series and I just love it.
The premise of the show is that a particular celebrity is taken back through the generations of his or her own family. In past episodes, David Tennant, Jerry Springer, Jeremy Irons and Julia Sawalha to name but a few, have all taken part. They usually begin their quest by speaking to immediate family who bring out any photographs, letters and documents still in their possession. Then the delving into the previous generations begins ¬– followed by the cameras.
The further they go back in time, the more interesting it becomes. There are expeditions to records offices, interviews with experts and visits to locations in the UK and abroad. David Tennant, who is Scottish and whose real name is MacDonald, discovered his great grandfather was a local football hero who married the prettiest girl in town. They were, apparently, the Posh and Becks of their day! Julia Sawalha’s father was of Jordanian parentage while her mother’s family were Heugenots from France. Jerry Springer’s story was very moving. His parents escaped Nazi Germany with days to spare and Jerry was born in London. He never knew what happened to his grandmothers but it was heartbreaking when he discovered they both died in concentration camps.
If you love archaeology, Channel 4’s Time Team is the perfect programme. This takes us through the progress of a dig in Britain – the site could be anything from a prehistoric fort, Roman villa or medieval manor house. Time Team is hosted by Tony Robinson (Baldrick in Blackadder) with great enthusiasm and verve. He jumps from trench to trench examining the finds, checking out the progress of this brick wall or that stone paving. With the experts he examines old maps, checks the geophysics of the area to see what can be discoverer from the soil and with the help of computers, recreates the buildings or objects they have found.
There has also been a vogue for reality shows that attempt to recreate the past from the perspective of the ordinary citizen. Currently, BBC2 is showing Victorian Farm where a group of people try to run a farm using the methods prevalent in the 1850s. This is the latest in a crop of such shows. Around the millennium, the BBC showed The 1900 House where a modern family was selected to live in a late Victorian house in London – using only the technology available in 1900. They had to cope with the joys of cooking on an old range, having a primitive bath (state of the art in 1900), a copper for boiling the clothes, and keeping chickens in the small garden. The complaints the modern family had were feeling unclean, no proper shampoo, no television or radio and extremely uncomfortable clothes such as corsets. It made fantastic television as the mother broke down in tears and the teenage daughter had tantrums about a lack of a shower. It made us realise how fortunate and spoilt we all now are.
This show was followed by a family trying to live in an ordinary London house during the war (with recreated bombing!). The adults found it hard to cope with the lack of food due to severe rationing but the children, after they were weened off their Xboxes, had great fun riding go karts down the street. Another show gave us an insight into the hard grind servants endured in the big houses.
We all see history on television through the prism of our 21st century perspective and it can often tell us as much about ourselves as our ancestors.
