A House Through Time

It really is a perfect template for a history TV show - choosing a single house in England (hopefully the wider UK in further series) and chronologically charting history through the lens of its various occupants. I missed it at launch and only tuned in when they came to my city - which I quickly regretted and went back to hoover up the other series. I adore Olusoga and his detailed explorations of the lives of past people are warm, personal and deeply empathetic. As a former archaeologist there is not a better window into the past than the "ordinary person" and you get some glorious incidents, observations and snapshots of life this way. More than that my own particular interest is architectural archaeology, and how all old buildings carry the scars of their former lives - so not the people, but the house itself acts as a time machine. Wonderful. I want a billion series of this and a thousand spin-offs. I'd watch them all and command my descendants to do likewise, regardless of which house they end up.

This show is not about house and how it was built and changes made to it though time. This show seems to try find a house that have some owners with scandals or whose line of work while perfectly honest and acceptable at the time, but would be a career considered unacceptable today. Or who while inventing something that was ground breaking for its' time but proved to hidden dangers later in time. All of this present with the host/presenters prejudices stamped over every episode! He more of a social historian nat a historian of architecture !

Fascinating programme about the lives of ordinary people,who in many cases led quite extraordinary lives, the common thread being that they all lived at one time at 58/62 Falkner Street, built in 1841.The stories illustrate history in a very different way, more real seen through the lives of these residents. Amazing amount of research to uncover such a wealth of detail about those people against the changing backdrop of Liverpool. Great series, hope it will return at a new address.

A House Through Time

I must say I was critical of the first series of this show for several reasons, these were:-

1, on occasion, looking at history through a modern day prism, one example was particularly when talking about slavery.

2, pushing liberal authoritarianism when looking at how things were and how the historian thinks they should have been.

3, making a conjecture way beyond the historical facts before us.

With that said, series 2 is a total triumph and I will detail the main advances forward

1, the brilliant use of primary sources, we, the viewer are in on the action.

2, like a great detective we are led by these sources in a haphazard way this is thrilling.

3, the opinions and conclusions have been curbed to perfectly rational suggestions that add and interpret the often fragmentary historical documents.

4, the graphics were enhanced, amazing!

5, it was masterful in episode 3 to allow an emotional relative to take over the show, this was visceral and dry history was brought alive.

6, the casual manner of delivery with the viewer, we were on a journey together not board and chalk.

Now to be picky

1, the interior of the modern house was a bore, and yet this was the star of our show, this needed dressing.

2, inserting the MP was an obvious political point, an agenda that was misjudged here, this was self-indulgent.

3, it was clear the second half of episode 3, with the IRA became rushed, clearly the team was not expecting such rich history, but this didn't do it justice.

David Olusoga has managed to cut the historical cake in a novel and refreshing way, he took this simple idea and ran with it. This programme was without doubt brilliant, as indeed he is, and deeply memorable, it is not as he says an alternative history but a parallel history of everyday folk.

It is clear from the narrative the catch-net of a welfare state is the shining star of our civilisation, lacking still in most places today including America, who say you are "two paychecks from the street".

A House Through Time.

Season 4

Episode 1, this was a great start, a fabulous high Victorian house with clearly a rich history. I would make two minor points, the death penalty exists in societies that have less enforcement and hence tend towards retributivism or cannot financially support long term incarceration hence deportation. David fails to mention here, not what the current woke views are on child labour and the death penalty but what did the Victorians actually think about these things at the time (text and context) Secondly the pace and repetition of the show, it was glacially slow and everything was repeated three times, come on let's crack on with this at a pace, I heard it the first time, you do have a knowing adult audience here.

Episode 2, was a total triumph, the pace picked up, just tons of detail, perspective and context. David's conclusions and analysis were brilliant in using the occupants of the house as a window into different occupations, countries, diseases and customs. This was history brought to life!

Episode 3, David covered 3 people connected to our house, he very cleverly chose people from the various families that would allow him to show facets of domestic or world history. Whilst totally delightful this technique runs into problems when the history becomes overwhelmingly rich and, we the viewer, are snatched away with just a fleeting glance. Mostly David gets the balance right but sometimes, like this episode, I felt cheated. My suggestion, if it really gets fascinating allow one person to take over a complete episode on indeed tack on another episode, also I would want to immerse David in the trenches, shove him into uniform and strap him in a straitjacket, it all may sound flippant but it all makes history alive. I really thought David quite brilliantly analysed the documentary evidence and not once conjectured beyond the detail. The same cannot be said of the other contributors "Rayon was the democratisation of fashion", well that's not true, or Theosophy was a place where "women had a voice as they had no voice elsewhere", again not true. Both these viewpoints are woke tropes and beyond what they thought at the time.

Episode 4, David surpassed himself here, waxing lyrical about the 130 past residents of the house, it was a very moving conclusion to a spectacular series of programmes.

Now looking back over the last few series it is self-evident David rivals Mary with his skills and abilities in bringing history to life. These shows represent the very best of BBC broadcasting and their ability to invest in a new idea, no other Chanel could achieve this level of excellence.

A House Through Time

Series 5

David Olusoga tries a new way to cut the "history cake" in an attempt to reveal the history of the Second World War.

It was more than a little concerning that David cherry picked the residents to advance forward different aspects of the history and it became less and less about the houses, their geography and architecture and became more broad brush in its approach. Instead of the history being eclectic and serendipitous attached to a place it became more the reflected interests of David Olusoga and his political world views and often we had the past viewed through a modern prism, this will always be unacceptable.

It lost its focus and just became to large and lumbering as the series of 4 programmes progressed. I would note that the detail of two histories was very different, in England it was full and detailed but Germany more general and quite frankly less interesting.

Much was good, David was very careful and stuck (quite rightly so) to perfectly fair interpretations of the history, except for two egregious examples he suggested that perhaps a couples reason for divorce was that the wife had joined the Nazis party and yet in the same programme a German expert explained young people embraced the Nazis ideology as it provided security and advancement at the time. And then to suggest euthanasia of Klaus a polio patient, on pure supposition is absurd, done just to insert this practice into the programme.

I think, as an historical experiment this just did not work, there was just too much cutting between families and the chronological impetus became weakened. I liked finally the grasp of parallel histories rather than alternative histories as a concept but the programmes ended up sorting people into our current understanding of the history, not the stated initial intention.

If the programme had focused on one place, fewer flats, fewer people and adhered to a strict chronology we would have been more invested. We could have then had a German house, and done the same, but I must be clear they have to have sufficient specific detail for it to work.

I may seem over critical, as there were some fantastic insights, some gripping moments and some interesting history. But it was overall patchy, this is just not as good as the previous series and it's a 6 outta 10 from me, a victim of poor structural format, and overly intrusive music.