MOMMY, WHAT'S A FLOPPY DISK?
October 11, 2005
PBS to Air "Twentieth Century House" Mini-Series
New York City, NY | Can a modern family cope with living in the world of 1998? That's the question producers hope to answer in a five-part series debuting this week on PBS.
Twentieth Century House follows previous successes like Frontier House and Colonial House, where volunteer families were transported to the 1880s and 1620s, respectively, to explore the worlds of yesteryear.
"The participants in this series face a unique set of challenges," promises producer
Beth Hoppe. "The families with be living in adjoining town houses, fitted to appear and function just as they would have in pre-Millennium America."
"Of course the parents and children will go off to work and school every day as usual," says co-producer Simon Shaw, "but while at home they must follow turn-of-the-century rules."
This means, among other things, the kids must survive without cellphones or iPods. And they'll be playing earlier versions of video games like Leisure Suit Larry and Grand Theft Auto which contain a drastically reduced amount of nudity and violence.
As for the parents, there will be no reality television shows like The Apprentice or Dancing with the Stars. Only reruns of shows from the period will be available. And, of course, no HDTV or plasma screens.
Each of the families will have a PC with Windows 98 installed, and a Mac running System 7. They will be able to access the internet only via AOL dial-up service.
Like with the previous PBS shows, we can expect the unexpected, with the two families being tested to the limits of their patience and imagination.
"Try to imagine," warns Hoppe, "they'll be dropped into a world where gas is $1.24 a gallon, where the stock market is soaring higher than ever, where the Government is saddled with a massive budget surplus, and where thousands of Americans aren't being killed and maimed in a poorly-planned Iraq war started by an incompetent President. You've got to wonder how we ever survived under such conditions."
Their next project, called Fetus House, will document a volunteer living inside a womb for nine months and being fed through a tube.
