@@pinknotthebarbie I saw the high street series. I was was only recommended this channel about a week ago and I'm really enjoying seeing what life was like (I'm 43 so I was born in 1978). It is so different to hearing about these times and some parts have been hard to see, namely how the Hawkes family had to see the signs 'no coloureds' in the sixties. In some ways we haven't learnt anything from the past and how people treated each other. We need programs like this so that we can change. I'm not English however my ancestors were descendants and my sister lives in England with her family. I live in New Zealand where we grew up.
All the way through this series Saskia has been the most impressive. She has shouldered hardships and changes with fortitude, maturity and good nature. I'm sure she has gone far
I loved the power cuts as a child because it meant the candles would come out which to me made everything cosy & magical, I still love candles to this day because of this at the age of 58.
I think he was living his best life before this series he got involved in.. He has a close and loving relationship with his wife and children and they with him. THATS the BEST life!
It makes me a bit sad to hear that these kids aren’t allowed to go out and play. I grew up going out and playing all day long and not even seeing my parents until the street lights came on was pretty normal. It gave us a sense of confidence and independence. What’s going to happen to these kids when they grow up?
Exactly! I would do the same back in the 1970s. Meet friends outside and bike around the neighborhood, play games, etc., all day long, and as long as I was back home for dinner time, then all was fine.
I loved the '70's. My mother was not so keen with the power-cuts, bread and sugar shortages etc. but I didn't care back then. We did not have a T.V., (my Grandparents did) and so playing out all day was normal. I remember my Grandad complaining about all the strikes - they seemed to be on the news about it on a daily basis, plus stuff about the Lebanon, Beirut, bombings, the I.R.A., Henry Kissinger, Idi Amin (who scared me to death as a kid). Gosh. Memories.
@@lexiburrows8127 I grew up in the US, and we didn't have power or water cuts or sugar or bread shortages. But we did have gasoline shortages around 1973. I remember seeing on the news cars lined up for hours waiting to get as much gasoline as they could, but I was only 11, so it didn't really matter to me.
I grew up in the 90's and early 2000's in a rural area in Ontario my siblings and I were always outside playing even in the forest and all that with the other neighborhood kids. In the summer we were outside from after breakfast until dinner accept for a quick lunch break.
It had a kind of magic didn't it? We would spend ages with tinfoil and mirrors, trying to get maximum light, then play cards and draughts or do shadow nonsense! People seem to have lost the art of inventiveness/resourcefulness. Which is a bit worrying as they are going to need them again soon
I couldn't 100% enjoy them as our road was rostered for the power cut on Thursdays when Top of the Pops was on. The kids at school who weren't cut off used to rub it in saying Slade/T Rex were brilliant last night or simply asking "Did you watch TOTP last night" knowing we couldn't, Arrogant swine's, but I'd have done the same :D
I was a young Mother in 1972, and had to prepare every bottle for my daughter each day, working out around the powercuts .I had moved south to a city, and our young family were in a multi-storey flat, which meant that the lifts did not work when rhe electric supply was off. You had to make sure that your shopping was done when the lifts were working, as managing a pram and a couple of bags of shopping could not be done, if you had to bring it up 9 flooors of stairs! Happy days!
I was a seventies kid I remember the power cuts and the strikes and three day week the water shortage and getting water from a stand pipe with the hot summer we were given a jam sandwich and a bottle of orange juice and told be in when the street lights come on or else this brings back a lot of memories
Britain was a bit different from the US in the '70s. No water shortage, no power outages unless there was a storm or somebody ran into a pole. Hot summers meant staying inside where there was air conditioning, I hated the heat, still do. "Washing up" was putting the dishes in the dishwasher. And of course at the end of the '70s we got a computer. Oh, and yes of course I learned to shoot a gun as a kid. I was probably 7 or 8 the first time I fired a rifle. Wasn't really my thing, I got my first soldering iron in the '70s, took a lot of things apart.
I m not yet a british citizen, but i love this episode. It s soo different from my childhood back in the '80 in Romania. I ve always wonder myself how it would be to live in such a beautiful and free country. Watched nearly every single episode from Ansolute History and sometimes i even cried watching the workhouses stories.
The one flaw with this concept is that when going back to a past era, you are constantly aware of what is missing from your present day life. I was a teenager and young adult at this time leaving school in 1974 and I don't remember being unhappy or discontent, we just got on with life and accepted it. May be I was lucky but I remember the 70s as being the happiest decade of my life. As a new young adult, everything was very exciting. My first job, passing my driving test, getting a car (Ford Cortina of course), my first legal visit to a pub, voting for the first time (1979) starting my carreer in the Police, I wish I could relive it all!
"Every household had a glass fish" - I still have one of these glass fishes in my living room XD. I've recognized so many items from my childhood but I've never seen someone having furry walls!
LOL we had a glass fish too, and a bowl of wooden fruit. I too recognized a lot of the decorative items. I enjoyed being a child in the 70's. Loved my bike with the banana seat, called her Lucy lol.
We never had a glass fish! my mother thought they were 'common!' My aunt, on the other hand, collected them, and those creepy glass clowns. Remember the handkerchief point vases/bowls? I won one of those on a tombola at the school fete and was so proud to take it home to mom. She kept it for years. Looking back she probably hated it, but I had won it for her, so it was special! It got broken by my dad, along with other stuff when he did something stupid and fell into the wall unit He wasn't drunk, (his idea of a night out was half a pint of mild) I think he fell off a stepladder or something, doing some DIY, which he was singularly unsuited for and my mom had asked him not to do. So he was out of favour for some time! Lol
@@hogwashmcturnip8930 Hahah, thank you for reminding me about those glass clowns! Yes, they were creepy. I had completely forgotten about them and laughed out loud when I read your comment. Always liked those glass fish though. There was something endearing about them, probably because they were so common. 😄🤡🐠
This was a wonderful series and I really enjoyed it. The children were SO well spoken, and were very good at verbalizing their feelings and insights on the era's. I know it's not possible, but I would be interested to see what everyone is up to now that almost 10 years has passed since the experiment.
Please bring this show back. I am so sad to not see these families anymore as each and every family unit was so lovely and interesting. I wish them all nothing but happiness.
British television is so good! I don't even watch it here in America anymore. I'm so glad to have found your channel, I've subscribed and am discovering all of this television treasure you've uploaded. Thank you!
These turn back series have been absolutely great! (Both this family series as well as the high street one). I could easily watch the same set up with new set of families. I would love to see how things were even further back from the Victorian era as well. I thank the families who participate. They selected fantastic families for the documentary/experience.
Great series filmed in my hometown, Morecambe. As a teenager, bride and mother in the 1970's the film sets, cars and fashions were very accurately portrayed and I realise a lot had to be packed into the one episode covering the whole decade. But I have to add the first plastic carrier bag made its appearance in 1975 sold by the co-op (where I worked on Saturdays) alongside the change to supermarket shopping in place of the corner shops where you got served by the shopkeeper! By 1976 I was married and pregnant and it was horrble as it was the hottest summer ever and having to go and get water from a standpipe!! (1973-had all David Bowie's L.P.'s and saw him 'live' in May, great memories!).
No the first plastic carrier bags were before 75, my Dad fed up working in the mines got a job at a local factory making carrier bags, and one of their big customers were Mark's and Spencer's a thick white plastic bag with the dark green logo on it, my Dad brought a massive roll home with him one time, people thought we were posh and shopped at M& S all our neighbours had them as well, this was about 1970/ 71.
In first grade, in 1972, I was 6. The teacher was allowed to to grab a naughty kid and spank them in front of the class. But even us kids knew it was an old fashioned move and I never saw it done but once.
Omg exactly!! I think that the people remember the "good old days" when they were kids. They didn't have all the problems the adults were having. They just nostalgic about their childhood without realizing all the hard things from it.
@@rebeccavarkevisser8830 I think you have a valid point. But I also think you overlook the fact that kids have eyes and ears. Maybe they just chose not to use them. I used mine, and my ears, when my grandparents talked. I will admit that I didn't realise how hard it must have been for my parents until I was married myself. They always made sure I had food, clothes, even holidays. I wonder now what they deprived themselves of to do that. But I think that gave them something too. We had no car and never went anywhere much, and if we did it was like some big excursion. Holidays were like the Grand Tour. My mother would store up tinned food and other things and send them by train, along with our clothes and bedlinen. We were only going to a caravan in Devon! But because we had no car, we had to walk miles from the train station. It made perfect sense to send food and clothes on, as we would be in a remote place. We couldn't have carried it. We would catch a bus that dropped us at a crossroads and then we walked. this was in the 60s, not the Middle Ages! But it was so special Turning a certain bend in the road and seeing the sea ... At the risk of sounding boring, most kids are deprived of that kind of experience now, which is why they are obnoxious! Lol
@@hogwashmcturnip8930 Kids do not understand adult problems. If you tell them that an economic situation is bad, they would look at you as if you were mad because they do not understand. It is not until they reach adolescence that they realise how bad a situation is.
Growing up in the 70s & 80s were great times mostly. Playing out until tea time and could be trusted to be on my own till my parents came home from work after sch. I remember the power cuts and usually on the weekend😩.
VHS didn’t actually become available in shops until early 1980’s. And most families were still using blankets. And everything came in a brown paper bag and cellophane was new.
I was really surprised by Sandra....she was so shocked by the place they lived in in the 60's, and than she became a land lady, renting out same dirty and horrible rooms she was living in and (rightfully so) complaining about.
And the gas shortages. I remember as a teen in the 70s I would sit on the hood of the car in the summer and tan. We would wait for hours in gas lines. I remember when they issued certain days to get gas too.
I remember the power cuts, we lived in an all electric house and had to cook on camping stoves for four people! I was a teenager and thought it was a giggle at the time!
Really good programme. I was coming into my teens in the seventies'. My dad had taken on his first mortgage and was plunged into a lengthy strike only months later. My mother was a pub cleaner, but had to go for longer hours working in a children's home. I remember having to do my homework by candlelight. God, what the older generation left us with. My dad went back to work eventually, but the damage was done and the factory closed down a few years later. He never worked again. Exciting times in many ways. Great music and toys etc, but hard to establish yourself. The jackboot of the unions rang hard.
mid 70;s my mum got herself a "little part time job"..dad didnt speak to her for quite a while, and never lifted a finger in the house. she felt guilty so done everything at home too. with my help.
Very glad this episode didn't go the "oh, back in the day kids played OUTSIDE with each OTHER and weren't GLUED TO SCREENS" route without mentioning the fact that 21st century kids often aren't *allowed* that kind of outdoor freedom.
I remember those power cuts vividly. Sitting with the light of candles several nights a week. At least we had gas so we could eat and make hot drinks. I remember playing board and card games with my Dad until it was time to go to bed.
Wait, you mean kids "these days" just play with their ipads all day? I was LITERALLY born in 2006, and everyone in the neighbourhood would just get together right after school to cycle and play on the streets until around 2015
well it depends on A the country B the type of person and C the neighbourhood, i was born 2005 and we did go out and play however i was never too social, my father was very introverted so i guess i inherated that, i would go out from time to time and play whit the little friends i had, of course when technology came i guess i got carried by it, however my parents weren't able to afford a lot of stuff, such as laptops, computers or a ps2, but one my uncles who lived in the US who you know had some money bought me a ps3 and hell i had fun whit that, i don't think staying in home is all that bad, but definitevely a balance between both is very important and i guess being a city dweller also has an effect on you, since i live in a city as population dense as london
Shag carpeted walls that matched the floors were so cool in the 1970's. They were usually in the basement rec room or as we called it the 'rumpus room'.
@@vylbird8014 yeah, in the US there was a debate that lasted into the late 1970's as to whether or not it was better to make children's pajamas and stuffed animals out of synthetic fabric that could burst into flames or fabric that was flame-retardant but caused cancer. Good times.
I grew up in the 7os and I Never knew of anyone having furry walls! Some of this was like parallel universe for me. I was like 'Which planet 70s was this?' I don't remember that!'
That yellow daisy wallpaper whisked me back in time so fast I got whiplash. My mother had it on the kitchen wall. As for the strikes, power cuts & no water, living in Australia, we had (& still sometimes have) water use restrictions enforced by heavy fines in drought years & I remember builders' union boss Jack Mundy being interviewed on the roof of a nice old building during the green strikes in the mid or late seventies, protesting the demolition of lovely, perfectly serviceable Federation (1890-1915) terraces etc. The unions were strong back then.
I recognised so much from my childhood, but kids today have no idea how hard it was. My grandma still had an outside loo, there was blackouts & the drought of 76 & jubilee year 77
They had only just become available around this time, and would have been out of reach for the vast majority of families. I doubt the family portrayed here would have been able to afford one.
I had a Saturday job from the age of 13 on a wallpaper stall on the local market. I prided myself on being able to unroll the samples with a flourish and show them where the join was. By god's we had some freaky stuff. Ancient Egyptian (ta, the obsession with King Tut) and sepia fairies I had that in my first 'front room'. They weren't obvious, and it was hilarious watching stoned friends going 'Wow, do you know you have fairies crawling up your walls? Err YES! That was 78, not 72, but they have not got anywhere near that with this. Where is punk? And I never knew any man, apart from my father whot did this 'New Man' stuff in the early 70s. But back to wallpaper I got my wartime parents to put black wallpaper on their chimney breast! I still think it was cool! The tupperware thing is crap too. I got dragged to a couple. You had tea and rich tea biscuits and some woman trying to tell you how great their plastic salt and pepper pots were!
I was born in 1970. My dad had just returned from Vietnam a year before I was born and was scheduled to get out of the Army. He was afraid he did not have the job skills to support my mom and me so he rejoined the Army as a Private First Class (E2) a very low rank. More secure than his only hob skill as a farmer of hops which do not grow in Indiana where we were. My mom always worked part time as a store clerk or office typist. The first 5 years of my life were lean with uncles or aunts living with us to share money. I shared a bedroom with my uncle Mike from 4 to 7 years old. My dad made rank pretty quick and my mom got lucky with some well paying office manager jobs for electrical, plumbing repair and pest control companies. During my teen years my mom was a civilian employee of the military as a Colonel's public liaison as a GS-10 Step 3 (A pretty high civilian pay rank) while my dad had made E-9 1st Seargeant (a very high enlisted rank) We lived an upper middle class life most of the time from age 8 on getting better as I turned 13 years old.
The flat Lisa has looks better than the one we had when we moved with our single mom to London in the 1970’s. I remember that it was challenging getting anything at all and we stayed at a hotel for at least a month. We finally got a 1 bedroom, cold water flat in Alberts Buildings. There was a tin tub in the kitchen and a little wooden closet containing a toilet and that wax-paper toilet paper that was popular in England at the time for some reason completely unfathomable to us. The flat was always cold and we could hear rats scratching in the garbage chute. The living conditions were a far cry from our 3 bedroom ranch-style home in the CT suburbs. I still remember our Albert’s Building neighbors though; they were wonderful, welcoming, down-to-earth people. ❤
To be fair that wax toilet paper was unfathomable to most people in those days. It actually repelled moisture! Awful stuff but ever-present in schools at the time. 😄
@@musicloverlondon6070 I really feel someone should get to the bottom of that mystery. I imagine the inventor was a sadist who kept soft, absorbent TP at his own house.
I remember the power cuts it was like a cool adventure, we had a coal fire so wasn't an issue , toasted cheese bread off the fire nothing like it, life was more simple then 😔😔😔
My Mom had one of those fish, and my Dad had a green Cortina. I was 16 and working in a shoe shop during the power cuts. I thought it was great, because when the power went off the boss used to close the shop and send us all home, lol! 😀
My father worked construction in the 70's, I remember the strikes , one lock out was 6 months. You couldn't scab, what ever your politics . You'd never get rehired . Once the site you were on was over no foreman would hire a scab because it would cause trouble. Welfare and social services wouldn't help as they'd tell the wife and mother, "your man has a job to go to .it's his choice that's causing your problem".
I remember the power cuts in South East London, the electric would go off for about a minute, then come back on, you then had 2 minutes to get candles & if you had them, they were a luxury item torches ready, then you were plunged into darkness until the following day. We were fortunate to have gas central heating & a gas cooker, so, we could still cook or boil water in a saucepan for washing up or making tea & coffee, but of course there were those who had electric cookers which made the country help those who were less fortunate.
Loved each episode of the show! Do you by chance have What's for dinner? Which is also a look through the decades of how eating habits and availability has changed... it would be so great to watch it. Thank you for all your programming @Absolute History
Although very rare in 2021, I love a power cut....The feeling of helplessness, the light from candles, a sense of everyone being in the same boat, to making tea on a little gas camping stove...I love it
This took me back to the days when I was out on my bike with friends all day, only coming home for lunch & back out again & home only when the street lights came on for dinner. On school days we would rush home after school, get changed & out with friends. Kids were far more social in those days & more independent. Everyone looked out for each other & neighbours were all friendly. I knew everyone by name in my street. I bet it’s not like that now?
Bravo! This has been such a fun and emotional experiment to watch. It is one thing to read about history but to see/watch it play out adds so much more insight.
apart from "everything in this show that I remember growing up in the 70s" I just saw the combination green bowl and slicer/grater lid from my mother *that I still use today* . Actually, I just noticed a few more 70s Tupperware items that are still going strong in my kitchen draw! My mother bought here chest freezer from Macross in Cardiff in '71. the payment card was in £sd & £pp. It only failed in 2011, so I think she had her money's worth!
Using “The Family” as a guide, which was first aired in 1974 - this is pretty accurate. I’m American, so our 70s was a little different. I was 14 in 1974. Love this series!
I was born in the 70s and raised my kids similarly. They did have a limit on how far they could go but they had HOURS of unsupervised play in the neighborhood. They will tell you themselves that they are glad for it. When I was young, we rode our bikes across town to swim and soccer practice. I hate that many children have so little freedom to just play outside anymore.
I was 15 in 1970 so grew up in the 60s. As kids we spent all our time outside playing games and playing in tree houses or wandering the fields. Those poor modern day kids don't know what to do with themselves without today's technology.
I was six when the blackouts were on and i remember my dad charging various car batteries for the portable tv we had for the caravan so we still watched tv when the electric went off. I used to go into infant school the next day and tell my mates what they missed on tv. We always had a lot of people children and adults in our front room on blackout days!
Yeah I agree not a lot of car ownership it can be goggled more people didn’t have cars than did where as now it’s the over way round now and lots of the cars were a bit rust buckety (in the uk anyway) and I’m talking about the north east. I also think when watching things like this that there is a lot of artistic license and misinformation. I can’t remember the power cuts or food shortages but the power went off a lot more in those days normally anyway so it was kind of a thing and not that alarming. The paper and media were scaremongering a lot then too.
You are so right. We had a car, but many of my friend's familes did not. Towards the end of the 70s it was more common. We only had 1 car and my mum didn't even ,earn to drive till 1980.
wow so many memories from the 70's, not a good decade for me as my mum died in 76 leaving my dad to bring up 2 little girls and work at the same time. Not something he had ever contemplated. I remember the power cuts and dustman strikes. Rubbish all piled up in the streets and the rats. Some things you never forget.
Mums die in all decades… Rubbish temporarily in the streets due to dispute is preferable to the permanent rubbish in the disgusting streets of repulsive ‘modern’ Britain…
Excellent series. Truly enjoyed all of the families, and watching how they adapted and worked together through their history. Highly recommend watching. Sad it has come to an end.
They jumped about all over the place and some of this stuff didn't become commonplace until the 80s. I thought it was mostly inaccurate and it made me wonder about the earlier shows. Of course they have no one to call them out on inaccuracies in them!
My family in the 1970s had no duvets either- we had blankets. No video recorder either- they were very expensive. We rented a black and white TV from Radio Rentals.
My mother asked my friend if she made her bed every day and my friend said yes, so my mother used that when she was telling me to make my bed. I said "that's not fair, she has a continental quilt!"
Lol I love these programs ordinary working class families are never represented.. In 1970s no one I knew had a freezer, telephone or video recorder (pmsl did not have these until the 80s). Everyone rented a black and white TV. A small fridge with a very small freezer compartment at the top big enough for ice cubes. We never ate TV dinners or takeaways. We ate fresh homemade meals using vegetables from our small garden. We only had sweets or crisps on a Saturday out of our pocket money that we did chores for. There were three flavoured crisps to choose from Smith's ready salted with sachet of salt, Chipmunk Beef Oxtail and Golden Wonder Chicken crisps or we saved our pocket money up for something special. Christmas we had a small stocking, one big main present e.g a bike and a couple of smaller gifts. In winter we had stalagmites on the inside of bedroom windows it was so cold because there was no heating upstairs. We were lucky we had heating downstairs many families did not. We had hot water bottles. We played outdoors but as others have already said children were kidnapped, murdered and abused then as they are now, the only difference is that then we had only 3 channels on the TV and children were not allowed to watch the news or read newspapers. If you look on RU-vid for UK 1970s children's information adverts you will find plenty warning children not to speak to strangers etc but unlike today they were actually very frightening adverts that you did not forget whether it was crossing the road, playing on railroad lines, playing around pylons, cesspits or farm machinery these adverts would be banned today lol Today news is all day every day and available through different mediums that children have easy access to. My father worked long shift work including over Christmas, but also grew vegetables in our small garden to supplement his poor wages. Hence so many strikes due to poor pay and working conditions in the 70s. My father also recycled old bicycles so that they looked like new for our Christmas presents. We never knew that we were poor because everyone we knew were poor. We ate seasonal vegetables and fruit. All the family sat down together to eat the same freshly homecooked meals, including babies whose meals were moulered. We did not have different choices of what to eat and we did not waste food. If we did not like something then we went without e.g I did not like certain texture meats or fish so I would have vegetables instead. My mother knitted our cardigans and jumpers using wool unravelled from jumble sale clothes. We wore hand-me-down clothes, newspaper was used for the guinea pigs bedding, cardboard boxes were often cut to shape and used as insoles in our shoes and also put in the compost. Milk bottles and pop bottles were returned. So contrary to common belief recycling is not a new concept it was part of normal life. Ordinary working class families did not own their own homes, cars, have time saving kitchen gadgets or fridge freezers, fashionable clothes or the latest toys as depicted in the documentary. How nice it would be if these programs actually reflected the true reality of ordinary working class families throughout the centuries. The reality for most working class families was actually depicted by the single mother's situation, and again can be seen on RU-vid in UK documentaries of that time showing working class families and the poverty they endured including poor housing etc.
"this is not a game... because on eof the risk is the candles toppling over... you have to make sure its quite secure, i'm gonna move this-" candle topples over and nearly sets a fire
The water shortage, and loss of power and garbage clean up was nothing my grand parents, and parents had to go through here in North America, in the 70's, but they did have to go through a gas crisis where it was hard to get ⛽petrol, and they had to wait for hours in line.
A brilliant series. We enjoyed it so much - don’t know how we missed it first time as we like this sort of thing, but it was completely new to us. Lovely seeing all the families really throw themselves into it without all the usual tantrums and moaning and trying to change things. They were brilliant. Really tried to live each era authentically, both the good and the bad. Sometime, please somebody repeat this, but actually have the families spending six months in each era, so that they can get a real feel for how it was to live that life day after day, week after week, month after month - a week per era is really too short, especially given how much work went into all the house interiors. There must be people who’d do it. Give these families awards, they were real troopers. 👍
I remember sitting doing my homework with my granddad under an old lamp. Thank god we still had coal fires back then. It is going to be hard when the guys of today cannot just turn on the gas central heating when the next shit hits the fan. Another point here is how easy it became to divorce, my dad left my mother in debt until the day she died. I'm a guy and women were treated like shit . My old man re-married and had a nice house and a good life while my mother struggled to bring three kids up.
I can relate with Lisa Rhodes. I'm a single mom of two very technology obsessed teenage boys. My youngest does lawn mowing to help with their entertainment expenses. However I'm not a a successful businesswoman. I work 34 hours a week at a gas station.
