Further Back in time for Dinner!

[Akire]

With the Robshaws!! Something to watch on a Tuesday hooray.

I like it as it is. Not too slick.

Giles Coren eats like a pig, it's disgusting! The noise! And close your bloody mouth when you chew

I watched it this evening and thought of "The Children Who Lived In A Barn" too. I really feel like reading it again now...

Enjoyed as usual tho could have given DEBBIE a whole day off 😂

DEBBIE is the star this show. The crap she has to do and just gets on with it - ie plucking a pigeon etc

Think she was relived to be called up for king and country

Poor Rochelle. She does struggle cooking and opening cans of soup

Daughters seem quite quiet and not really joining in

Living the hoover. Thank god I have Nigel (neato)

Can't believe they used to eat 3 course meals every night that would take 4hrs to prepare. Let alone then wash up everything

Lovely to see them outin a bike ride and being a family

I've got a copy of 'The Children Who Lived in as Barn' - the hay box made me remember it too.

I agree that Debbie is a complete star! One thing bugged me though - the costume they gave her. No way would she have done the cooking and cleaning in the fancy apron with the ruffles and broderie anglais - she would have had a plain apron for the rough, dirty work and would have changed to serve the family. That's the costume department's fault, though.

The 'cooking in a paper bag' thing was daft - they knew they had a gas oven, so why get Rochelle to cook in paper bags (unless it was to manufacture a cooking disaster for the cameras - cynical? Moi?).

SDTGis Let's face it I don't reckon they needed to 'manufacture' a cooking disaster for Rochelle. She has history ! There was only gas or coal\wood for cooking in those days though wasn't there? I suppose if they had had an enclosed range ( Aga type thing) the paper bag would have worked.

I think that the paper bags might have been wrong.
Would they have been more like waxed paper?

Or maybe they needed to be dampened?

ppeatfruit - you're not wrong about Rochelle's cooking 'abilities'. But she does give it a good go, even when she clearly has no idea at all what she's doing.

Just don't give Rochelle a tin-opener again FGS.

Debbie was superb and I second everyone who wishes her great things in her future career. What a ⭐️

STDG I get the feeling it's a deliberate act with her, as if it's a badge of honour to be inefficient in the kitchen, because she doesn't think it's feminist to be a good cook.

Ironic really because in those days (and quite a lot later) a lot of MC and UMC women were proud to say that they couldn't cook because it meant that they had always had 'staff' to do it for them.

I think it's now a running joke about Rochelle and tin openers.

I did wonder why neither of the Robshaw girls were shown going off to be Land Girls or similar. At least the elder one, and possibly both of them, must be a similar age to Debbie.

I also think it would be good to put the Robshaws in a working class household, that's nowhere near as nice and they can't afford staff. Maybe if they do Back in time to the 1800s and the boy gets sent up a chimney or down the mines. I don't know what would be in store for Rochelle and the girls - taking in washing? Pit head work? Prositution?

I would have assumed that Debbie did butchery as part of her catering course and depending what sort of food she ends up cooking, gutting pigeons might not be particularly unusual.

I do agree that she is the star of the show though and hope that she gets a good job or more TV work out of it.

I loved the Coal House and had a real soft spot for the little evacuee boy who enjoyed being there so much

Castaway was brilliant too and launched Ben Fogle's career, definitely the best reality TV show I've seen.

I loved this episode as well.

I did think that the girls might have helped more though when they wanted to be be making an effort to keep Debbie.

Quick dust & vacuum in the parlour so that Debbie didn't have to be doing it around them?

Missed the bags catching on fire

DEBBIE was amzing but would have been funny to see ROCHELLE pluck a bird

Assume after the war they will be poor and no maid and she will have to start cooking

This reminds me a lot of a schools programme from the 1980s called "How We Used to Live", but Bsck in Time is better.

My DC (5 and 8) love it! They watch it later on iPlayer. It has led to some interesting conversations about history - suffragettes, why people had servants, WW1. DS is a dedicated "meat and 2 veg" boy, but even he was amazed at how much meat they ate.

Rochelle is growing on me... very slightly. Why does she think cooking is so infra dig?

She doesn't think cooking is below her, she's just crap at it and relived that she's not having to do it. In their modern lives the husband is the one who cooks.

The 50s -> 90s version of the show was great for showing how much she was tied to the kitchen and didn't get to do anything fun for years and years.

I was really pleased that they didn't choose to cast a family where the mother thought it was jolly good fun to play at being a 1950s housewife, and instead had someone who said "this is a bit shit for women, isn't it?".

But I lived through the 50s onwards and dm was out at work from the early 60s . dsis and I helped by doing the housework and some of the cooking for pocket money.

It was strange because the women had all worked through the war and were 'encouraged' back to the home by the govt. who wanted full employment for the returning servicemen I suppose.

I expect if I did the research I'd find a relative who was Debbie. My family certainly weren't the Robshaws.

That's OK though, we're following a well-off middle class family because it's more fun to say "You have a gas cooker now - only 20% of houses have one" than it is to wait til they are standard.

Trills I was surprised at them being a 'well off MC family' with the size of the house they were in. It was too small IMO; More an UWC or LMC house.

But EVERYONE had a maid of all work in those days. Even families who were quite poor, not VERY poor of course . My DM always says that they were poor and she has recently told me that her and her brother had a nanny and there was a daily cleaner!

Anyone else swooning over that gorgeous 20s kitchen?
I'm amazed that steaming the fish hasn't made all the other food "fishy".
It seems more modern than the kitchens and living rooms of the 40s and 50s!

I miss the cocktail bars of the early 80s