TV: Time-travel family too nice for nasty viewers

By MICHELE HEWITSON

Two weeks into Pioneer House (TV One, Sunday, 7 pm) and we're finding out what life was really like in 1900.

Corsets and all those layers of clothing are hot.

Cut-throat razors require a steady hand.

And playing cards every night can get really boring, really quickly.

Still, it has become evident, really quickly, why we didn't need television. (And isn't that a lovely little irony?) Our forebears were much too busy to need outside entertainment. They were too busy moaning.

Baking soda makes for disgusting toothpaste.

Bathing in other people's soap scum makes for disgusting bathing.

Not bathing every day means that "they must have stunk like hell all of the time," observed head of the family, Michael Feyen.

Hang on a minute. "They?" If this is a true social experiment, shouldn't the Feyen family by now be stinking like hell?

I do hope nobody's concealing a stick of anti-perspirant in their petticoats. That would be cheating.

But it's not cheating to cite the past when it suits.

Stefan, aged 13, was not going to let an opportunity go by. He was going to make the most of travelling back into more patriarchal times.

"Boys don't do the dishes," he said smugly, "it's not what they did back then."

I wonder if the Feyen family have anticipated the aftermath of this social experiment. That boy's going to need a good deprogramming.

Domestic detail alone does not, of course, good dramatic effect make.

Our lot, actually, while they do a requisite amount of moaning, are simply too nice a family (thus far at least) to be particularly fascinating.

The closest we have come to Victorian hysterics was from eldest daughter Annika. And there were more tears than tantrum.

She was feeling ugly, she was missing her friends - and her make-up.

"I really need to get out of the house. I'm starting to go mad, I think."

Tsk, tsk. That's hardly the pioneering spirit. Pull those corset strings tighter, dear, and think about the advantages of crying without worrying about your mascara running.

The show has to be about deprivation to work.

Pioneer House is simply the latest spin on the idea of putting people on islands and leaving them, their egos and foibles, and a few cameras, to get on with it.

It's perfect as a television concept for our times; the possible permutations are endless.

The British Channel 4 version has sent a mixed-race English family to live in an African village. A scorpion in your chamber pot? Now that should make for riveting viewing.

It just wouldn't work the other way around. There would be no fun to be had in watching a family of have-nots move up the social ladder.

Although there was, actually. It was called Sylvania Waters, and that was where all of this started.

The difference was that it really was reality television. They were really ghastly. And they made for really great television.

The Feyens are too affable by half. We're a nasty lot out here in our 21st-century viewing houses. We've been too well trained; we expect tantrums and rampaging egos. We don't want to watch people getting on and being nice and moaning a bit.

So far, so dull. Although it might be worth keeping an eye on that lad.