![]() ![]() Occasionally, though, it does cut a little deeper. It skips through the decades (one decade per week from 1950, with the family spending a day in each year, give or take) with all the breeziness of kids playing dress-ups. ![]() That's the unstated agenda of Back in Time, I suspect (and I am fine with that), but there's nothing preachy about the show. And once that hurdle is crossed, others often follow. Their children – Olivia, 10, Sienna, 14, and Julian, 17 – are thus thoroughly modern Australians: born here, but with strong cultural links to elsewhere.įood in Australia is, in effect, the soft diplomacy of multiculturalism however negatively some white Australians might feel about immigrants, there's a good chance they like some of the stuff they eat. The Ferrone family enjoying a fondue in their 1970s house.įather and husband Peter is the son of Italians who arrived in the early 1950s mother-wife Carol's background isn't stated on air, but the press notes reveal she was born in Britain of Portuguese heritage and moved here aged eight. It's no fluke, I suspect, that our guinea pigs, the utterly delightful Ferrone family, are of immigrant stock, for if the changes wrought on Australia since the 1950s were to be boiled down to a single word, that word, surely, would be immigration. There are others too, but it's the last that seems the most relevant to the Australian iteration. The show is adapted from a British format that first screened in 2015 and has since already spawned several variations: Back in Time For the Weekend, which takes a look at the evolution of leisure Back in Time for Christmas (no explanation needed) and Back in Time for Brixton, which looks at the impact of Afro-Caribbean immigration on English culture. One doesn't want to dwell on such things at the dinner table, after all. You'll get mention of the Vietnam War and the sexual revolution, for instance, but it all moves along at rather a clip. It is, rather, history told through the domestic space – albeit history with a rather light touch. Servant Debbie must produce an eight-course dinner party in a Victorian kitchen with not so much as a hand blender to help her, the Robshaw ladies struggle with the formality of hosting formal afternoon tea and the family try out the Edwardian answer to a fondue set - brains and scrambled eggs, anyone?Īlong the way there is haute cuisine with Monica Galetti, a meaty Olympic breakfast and a music hall tea and singalong with surprise guests Chas and Dave.Despite the titular echo of Kitchen Cabinet and the presence of Annabel Crabb as occasional visitor-cum-MC, Back in Time For Dinner (ABC, Wednesdays 8.30pm) is not about politics. Their first meal is a mere five courses with a meaty pudding - but that is a simple amuse bouche to what follows. At the perfectly laid dining table, the Robshaws discover a decade of excess, ending up feeling as stuffed as the decor of their 1900s house. Debbie Raw - a part-time chef in the 21st century - is going back in time to be the family's maid of all work, responsible for all the cooking and cleaning. But the biggest surprise is a new addition to the household. Guided by presenters Giles Coren and social historian Polly Russell, they trace the incredible changes to Britain's diet and the extraordinary social transformation they reveal.Īs they enter the 1900s, they discover an unrecognisable world of strict etiquette, corsets and conformity. An ordinary house in south London is their time machine, transporting them through five decades and two world wars. The Robshaw family are experienced time travellers, but this time they are going further back than they have ever been before - to the turn of the 20th century, to discover how the food we ate and the way we ate it helped shape the modern family.
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