The 1900 House: Why the good old days weren't

By FRANCES GRANT

Fortitude was a virtue highly prized in the Victorian era. And tonight's opening instalment of the British history-as-fly-on-the-wall documentary series, The 1900 House (TV One, 8.30 pm), soon reveals why.

The series takes a modern middle-class family and transports them back to domestic life 100 years ago.

It belongs to a now familiar pattern of telly doco-making: create a situation, stick a bunch of people in it and film what happens. The chances of things turning entertainingly to custard - well, yoghurt anyway - are especially high in an age without refrig-eration.

The programme-makers have transformed a Victorian terrace house in Greenwich back to a model of its period, complete with such amenities as carpet-beaters, gas lighting and a horribly inefficient gas cooker.

Into this living museum come the excitable Bowler family - mum, dad and four kids - only too eager for the chance to experience home life as it was a century ago. The rules are that they must dress, eat and entertain themselves exactly as their Victorian forebears did.

Forget history as the stuff which belongs to victorious armies and the powerful. This is about what life was like for the ordinary people who had to contend with such daily struggles as heating enough water to take a bath.

The Bowlers were not chosen for their period-hat surname but selected from 400 families vying for the chance to star in their very own costume drama.

Their suitability for the "experiment," as it is referred to in the series, was assessed by a psychia-trist.

The family's enthusiasm as they squeeze into corsets and multi-million-buttoned bloomers cannot be faulted. "Brilliant," they agree.

Alas, the soft and coddled Bowlers. The Victorians, they learn within days, were made of sterner stuff. Six days of chamberpots and no power shower and they're itching to get back to the future.

The boiler's a disaster, the milk goes sour just hours after delivery, the youngest son is on hunger strike and a dirty-haired Mrs B is having a fit of the vapours.

The Bowlers' sealed world has some unfortunate leaks. You can take a family out of the year 1999 but you can't stop those fast-food flyers coming through the post slot and landing in the hands of salivating youngsters.

The series had its detractors when it screened in Britain, and there were reports in the press of cheating. Already, in the first episode, a desper-ate Mrs B commits shampoo fraud, sneaking in a bottle with the period shopping.

The 1900 House does deliver a share of revelations about the Victorian lifestyle. But mostly it appears to be a salutary demonstration of the weakness of the modern character.