Turn Back Time - The Family: End of Series Review

26th July 2012

Turn Back Time: The Family was one of those very rare beasts – a programme that managed to be both entertaining and informative as well as something the whole family could watch together. Three generations of my family enjoyed the programme, including my gran, who is not usually impressed by anything without Emmerdale, Coronation or Come Dancing in the title.

 The concept of the show was to transform a street to replicate a different era of the 20^th century each week, with families “living the lives of their ancestors”, meaning that the quality of life and type of home they lived in depended on what earlier generations of their family had experienced.

 For this final episode the families were sent back to the seventies, enduring not only the atrocious fashion and the furry wallpaper (yes, apparently that actually happened), but also the effects of the 3 day week and strike action, power cuts and water shortages. To reflect the change in divorce laws during the era, a new family led by a single mum joined the street, whose two boys quickly evaluated the seventies in all its frozen food glory as “disgusting”. They clearly hadn’t seen the hilarious ‘Action Cook Book’ being used by the Taylor household – never had an attempt to get men into the kitchen been more transparent: just put a gun on the cover, they’ll love it!

 By tackling 20^th century history through the focal point of the family, the BBC produced a lovely, engrossing and quietly brilliant series. The winning formula of the show can be attributed to the fantastic choice of participants, all game for whatever history threw at them, and the seamless production, which utterly immersed the families in the past. Trying to recreate the terror of World War Two air raids in 2012 is no mean feat, but the show went the whole hog and imitated the effects of a bomb by trashing one of the houses. If success is measured by expressions of genuine fear on the children’s faces, then it definitely worked.

 There is a temptation nowadays to blame computers and TV dinners for the break-up of the family. What Turn Back Time managed to do superbly was examine the past without rose tinted spectacles, and to allow the families to make their own judgements on whether life really was better in the old days. The series hasn’t shied away from controversial and shameful aspects of British history, introducing a black family onto the street in the 60s and replicating the prejudice and squalid conditions their grandparents would have faced when they immigrated to Britain. In the end, many of the families felt that 2012 was a pretty good time to live, all things considered.

The show succeeded in reminding us in a non-preachy way just how good we have it in the 21^st century, and though we may have tough times to deal with, in the past things could be a lot worse. After all, nothing quite spells hardship like the delicate discussion of how to adapt toilet use during a water shortage.