A House Through Time

I did not see the first series , but being from Tyneside myself, this was a must watch. I am glad I did watch it, as I found it absolutely fascinating. Tracing the history of one house through the lives of it's residents is a simple idea brilliantly executed. I cannot recommend this program enough.

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.

I started watching this program yesterday and absolutely love it already. It's fascinating, well told and David Olusoga has a real interest and love for the program. Highly recommend to all history lovers or people interested in the past.

When I first came across this I thought it would be like a show I loved from a few years back No. 57 The Story of a House. While this came across as such and I have only been able to see Season 3 as I could not find links for season 1 & 2. This was somewhat trying at times as the presenter tried to convey times past but viewed with the biases of present day that presenter has. I have to say some of his implied speculation and innuendo was very off putting to me. Then one in episode he stated that TB, measles, whooping cough were diseases of the poor classes was horribly inaccurate. These were common diseases of a time before the second World War and vaccination that plagued both the houses of rich as well as poor families. Perhaps he should spend more time on accurate research and not just talking off the top of his poorly educated and very biased head! There was just enough of interest in season 3 for me to rate this at 2 stars, but just barely!

I started watching this programme with not much expectation,feeling it would be slow & boring but how wrong I was. David Olusoga obviously has a passion for this house & takes us through all of 62 Faulkner Streets residents & stories,which on paper sounds uninspiring to say the least,but the idea just works. With David,s calm & demeaning manner he makes us see images in our heads of its many residents & how they lived & died in this house. If you haven,t seen this programme yet please do & hopefully it will come back for another series as there are thousands more stories out there to be told.