Does anyone appreciate how much work goes into these series? Getting together the clothing, fixing up the apartments- it was TONS of preparation

I’m sad this series has come to an end, and I hope Absolute History releases another living back in history series soon

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

When the Dad was singing. He was living his best life 😆

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.

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?

I was a teenager in the 70s and loved the black outs. Really fire, candles and radio Luxembourg

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!

17:00 " As night falls single mother Lisa reflects on her first day on the street" Priceless

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'd love a "Where are they Now?" Follow up on these individuals and their perspectives.

"Who is it???" THAT IS DAVID FREAKING BOWIE!!!!!! 🤣

The good old days, power cuts, 3 day week, standing in queues for bread, just as well we had good music ❤😊

I like how they tell about their real feelings in the moment and it isn't all acting I mean children tell the truth

“I’m more worried about hearing mum and dads stories of the 70s” dude one day you’ll wish you listened to all their stories

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 wondering how someone could be so excited over a glass fish and then remembered that my Grandpa still has one on his window ledge.

I love this series. 80’s and 90’s PLEASE!

I'm going to miss these families. We just start to grow fond of them and they are snatched away 💣💨 LOVED IT!!!! ❤

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.

As an early 70s teenager, I loved it. Played outside, the music, discos, fashion, TV., etc. It remains the best time of my life.

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.

Loved the Meadows the most, they worked so hard in nearly every era, so it was nice to see that they started to finally get a leg up.

That was brillaht, going through the decades like that. More of this type of films please.

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.

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

"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!

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

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!

My Mum used to do Tupperware parties when I was young. It was about 45 years ago and we still have some of her collection to this day.

As my mother would say when people talked about "the good old days"...NOW are the good old days. People forget how rough life could be.

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!).

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.

@12:45 She called the dirty dish rack "mingin" and my heart smiled. :)

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.

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😩.

15:04 Don't let the suuuuuuuuuun go down on meeeeeeeeee ♫

“If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down”

I was a teenager, in the mid to late 70s. I remember the power cuts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

So good to see the kids playing outside as children should 🍀

I was born 1966, The 1970s was alright, definitely better than things are today in this horrible world.

I had the yellow and orange flower wallpaper in my bedroom when I was seven, I chose it myself.

This was a wonderfully educational series I really enjoyed watching all of them ! Thank you

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. ❤

I hate vacuuming. Would never sign up for furry walls 😂

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

I remember the power cuts and 3 day week. Mum let everyone come and cook in our kitchen as we had a gas cooker

I was a kid in the 70s and a teen in the early 80s. I'm pretty sure VHS players were an 80s thing?

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 😔😔😔

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.

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

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 loved the 70’s , great music , crazy wallpaper , Advocat & lemonade , £1 notes and lava lamps 👍🏻👍🏻

O my gosh I had that same wallpaper in my bedroom as on this show with the Orange flowers. I had a tweety bird poster on top of 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?

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!

The production of these series is to notch. I hope the team won awards. Beautifully done!!!

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 KZfaq 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 KZfaq in UK documentaries of that time showing working class families and the poverty they endured including poor housing etc.

The fact this was made 10 years ago. I would love to see new families from todays world

I love the cute names they give crossing guards. Lollipop lady. Adorable

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!

Wow, the 70s were rough in the UK. I was born in 75 in the US, I don’t think they had things so rough here in regards to power outages and utilities. I do remember issues with gasoline shortages, but I don’t think it had a severe effect on my family personally.

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.

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.

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! 😀

Through it all, the families bonded so beautifully. I LOVE this channel and series!! Eager for more, please and thank you.

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

I love that Sandra made her know how bad it was

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.

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.

My mom just opened up boxes and cans to make dinner, everything was well done. Had to teach myself how to cook

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.

It was brilliant in the 70s ❤️ I would go back in a heartbeat I miss it so much

WOT no Silver Jubilee? Yes I can remember all of this. Not sure it was realistic that everyone had cars - we certainly didn't

I love the back in time videos y'all have been making!! They are spectacular! Make more!!!

Moree seriess like thisss please! soo in love of this turn back time and the farm series change my life forever!!! thank you

I put real salted butter & some half & half in my instant mash & it's almost passable haha!

So glad I stumbled upon this series! I’d love more 🦋

What a great series! I thoroughly enjoyed every single episode, and they were all very informative & eye-opening 👍

This series was amazing! Binge watched it all. Hoping for something similar in the future.

I love this!!!! Keep them coming!!¡!

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.

Looking at the Caribbean family bring back memories. Glass fish and all that colours! 🤗

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.

28:19 Wouldn’t that VHS player been *astronomically* expensive in the 70s?

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'm always amazed how the brits can find their past so well documented. My parents were refugees from WW2 from different countries. I know there were anchestors in Eastern Germany, Austria, Hungary, Croatia and most likely Russia, but tracing a family tree beyond my grand parents is simply not possible. So I could never participate in such an experiment as I will never know how my ancestors lived. I imagine they were probably farmers, barely making a living.

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.

Saskia:...I'm not really good with young children... also Saskia: *gets along with Alice and Lily swimmingly*

awww i really missed the other family who left in the previous episodes. all the cast are lovable ❤

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!

I agree! It takes a lot of work to do a series like this!!! I am so amazed at how they pulled this off!!! It’s amazing!!!

I didn’t have duvets, video recorder but recognise much of this stuff.