Wartime Farm

[birdienl]

The enthusiastic trio of social historian Ruth Goodman and archeologists Peter Gynn and Alex Langlands are known from the historic reality BBC show Tales From the Green Valley, Victorian Far and dwardian Farm n which the team recreated the life on respectively a 17th century, Victorian and Edwardian Farm for a year. I Wartime Farm hey take up a new challenge, this time to live the life of farmers during World War II.

I've immensely enjoyed the three previou 'Farm' eries and at the same time learned a great deal from them. It's therefore no surprise I also enjoye Wartime Farm lot! It has the same mixture of instructiveness, unearthing little known historical facts, humor and a great sense of rapport between the three 'presenters'. Ruth, Peter and Alex are really the best part of this series and I think it says a lot that they are among the 'famous' people I would most like to meet one day, above and beyond any actors or musicians I'm a fan of! It is just so clear they enormously enjoy living the history and this causes you as a viewer to enjoy discovering the historical facts with them. It's also really nice to see them putting their back into it and getting their hands dirty as opposed to a presenter who just stands in front of a historical exhibit and talks about it.

World War II at the Homefront in Britain is a subject I've always been interested in and I've read quite a number of books and watched movies and series set at this time. So it was no surprise there were a few subjects i Wartime Farm was already familiar with, but the series still taught me a lot of new information. The phenomenal task the farmers of Britain faced during WWII, to feed a nation cut-off from the rest of the world, really hit home with me watching this series. It was also interesting to learn how the government of Britain was involved in every detail of the life of the farmer, with regulations, inspections and bulletins. Last (but not least), the inventiveness of people during the war to make their daily necessities (food, clothes, furniture) from scraps of what we would call 'trash' is really amazing and inspiring. 

The set-up o Wartime Farm s a little different then the previou 'Farm' eries. Because WWII is still within the living memory of some people, more eye-witnesses are invited by the team to tell about how they experienced rural life during this period. Also, where in the previous series the episodes each highlighted a period in the year the team was on the farm, the episodes i Wartime Farm ocused on a specific period in the war. In this way the series recreated for example the influx of refugees to rural areas because of the Blitz in 1940 and American army units claiming farmland for their bases in 1944. It was very interesting to see all these different aspects of the war and the influence they had on rural life. 

Wartime Farm onsists of eight episodes of one hour and an extra Christmas episode (unfortunately without Alex....). I heartily recommend this series to anyone with an interest in the WWII era. This truly is informative television at its best!

What to know There are a few instances of mild British profanities and social drinking

This review was written for the Period Drama Challenge at Old-Fashioned Charm

Comments

[ladyadeone.livejournal.com]

WWII farm - what a neat idea! I was wondering whether they'd go the route of including "German POW" labor force later in the show? Though I guess it's done now. And I don't know how common that actually was during the War... Hm.

[birdienl.livejournal.com]

It was a great series! There was a bit of information about POW's in the last episodes, but not a great deal. Is it a subject you're particularly interested in?

[ladyadeone.livejournal.com]

Well... Not that exact topic, but I'm an amateur WWII buff and when I read your post the first thing that occurred to me was "Wouldn't it be cool if the producers (? stagers? directors?) of that show got some German-speaking young guys to be prisoner labor for an episode or two?" :P It's one of the most interesting aspects to the whole home front farmer thing, to me. But again, I don't know what the likelihood of an average Brit farmer having POWs in his neighborhood really was.

[birdienl.livejournal.com]

Ah, if you're an amateur WWII buff you should definitely watch Wartime Farm. Did you know over half of the episodes are on YouTube in total? (At least they were some weeks ago...)

There were not really German speaking prison laborers. I don't even really think they spoke... I think the likelihood was quite large, going on WWII series such as Land Girls and Foyle's War (maybe not the best of sources, but still...)