I’ve mentioned before how much I loved the “house” of reality TV series that aired on PBS around 1999 to 2004. In these shows, ordinary modern folks were dropped into a historical recreation house where they tried to live like people did back in whatever time period was prescribed. These were not historians or even history fans, just run-of-the-mill average people without any advance knowledge of how pre-20th-century technology or society worked. The results were dramatic, traumatic, frustrating, and fascinating.
Well, the low-key Christian fundie/home and garden Magnolia Network launched a version of this type of show called Back to the Frontier (2025), airing on HBO Max. Even knowing who produced it, I couldn’t help myself, and I was mildly surprised that the series wasn’t as generically wholesome as expected. Rather, it’s a typical reality show with manufactured drama and so many unexplained background bits as to strain credulity. But hey, not a terrible way to pass the time!
The show follows the adventures of three 21st-century families who attempt to live as 1800s pioneers. Similar to the U.S. homesteading acts, each family has to maintain a home and farm one acre of land, all during one summer. There’s the Lopers, a white couple with two teenage girls and a younger boy; the Halls, a Black couple with two teenage boys, plus the father’s mother stays for half the show; and the Hanna-Riggs, a white gay male couple with two young boys. Chip and Joanna Gaines, founders of the Magnolia Network, got some flack from their ultra-conservative homophobic church and other fellow fundamentalists for letting a gay couple in the show. Interestingly, Chip Gaines has been active on social media rebuffing the criticism with Bible quotes and stuff like, “Talk, ask qustns, listen.. maybe even learn.” I’m not ready to let the Gaines’ off the hook for their otherwise freaky conservative stuff, but I can appreciate that they tried to diversify this show’s cast.
However, the families are still total reality TV tropes! The whiney teenagers, the bitchy mom, the stubborn dad, they’re all here, often in the same house. Plus, the “oh noes we don’t have Wi-Fi or makeup or toilet paper!” from all these modern folks who apparently haven’t even gone camping before. Only the dad and grandmom from the Black family have any clue about hard work, because they grew up on a farm. Everyone else is beyond lazy and spoiled. A few of them start to learn over the course of the series, but it’s rough going.
For example, the girls in the Hall family complained to Florida Today, with Mia saying:
“My biggest struggle was cleanliness; getting clean was a huge chore and the environment wasn’t much help, it was dusty, muddy and harsh. There wasn’t a proper bathroom, no running water meant no hot showers like I’m used to.”
Zoe added:
“A struggle was the constant dust and filth, and no matter how much you swept, the cabin was never clean. Not to mention a mouse and a squirrel sneaking in and terrorizing our sleep.”
Stacey Loper, their family’s mom, had her own struggles with food, as she told Outside: “I wasn’t a vegetable girl before the frontier. But, baby, I ate so many cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots.” Hon, had you not met a salad in the 21st century? SMH.
One thing I loved about the older PBS shows is how they always looked back at the history and encouraged the modern folks to recreate historical life and learn from the past. Conversely, Back to the Future is always referencing the modern period, comparing how hard everything was in the past with their modern lives. One kid says, “The hardest part on the frontier is that everything takes so much time.” No shit, Sherlock!
There’s little appreciation for history, no learning how we’ve come from then to now. Only in one episode when the “almanack” each family is given tells them their own custom-made stories do any of the modern people reflect the tiniest bit. The Hanna-Riggs couple learn about “batching” where most-likely-gay bachelor farmers would live together on the frontier, and they get misty-eyed looking at photos of male couples from the period who couldn’t be open and wouldn’t have a family and children. The Halls are shown their whole family tree dating back before the 1880s, and then they learn about formerly enslaved Black folks homesteading on western frontier in the period. These few scenes give the families some perspective about what they’re doing on the show, but that’s about it for the 8-episode run.
The other way this one is more reality TV than history is that so many things are provided for the families without explanation. They each start out with a mostly complete house, plus a garden that’s already planted and flourishing. Then they’re given $30 to spend through the season, but all they pay for is livestock at an auction and groceries at the general store (plus they have to save $6 for a land fee at the end of the season). But somehow they get all kinds of goods and tools that substantially improve their circumstances. Where does the ice cream churn (and salt and ice) show up from? The apple cider press? The fishing poles? No explanation. shrug
Alas, for this blog, there’s minimal costume content! And in spite of some of all the other whining, nobody in the families really comment on their historical clothes. Pretty obviously, the women aren’t wearing corsets — when an itinerant preacher visits, one mom contemplates wearing a corset with her ‘Sunday best.’ In one episode when the kids all go swimming in the river wearing their historical petticoats or long underwear, you can see through the wet fabric that they’re wearing modern briefs and sports bras underneath.
At least people usually wear hats, especially adults, because that’s practical when working in the sun. Men also wear neckerchiefs, again because of heat. Women mostly wear their hair up (sometimes covered by a kerchief) or in braids (especially the girls). Unlike costume dramas, they get it, nobody wants hair in your face when you’re running after chickens or cooking over a hot stove.
Have you watched Back to the Frontier? Do you remember the earlier “house” shows?
Find this frock flick at:
The one thing I noticed was the clothing of the women. It’s the 1880s, but their clothing is designed more on an earlier style, which makes sense when you’re far from fashion plates, as well your clothing needing to be more functional for running a farm than being in style.
I remember the earlier shows! I used to think that I was born in the wrong time. Those shows changed my mind, because I saw what life was really like back then. I’ll take my modern conveniences, thank you very much. :)
Every time I go to the dentist, I’m thankful that I live today ;)
We have a historical village near my city and when I was a little kid, I’d get too into my Anne of Green Gables books and think living back then would have been the most wonderful thing. Attending about 30 minutes of 1800s era school at the village usually disabused me of those notions, if only because I hated writing with dip pins or on chalk slates.
Oh, god, yes. Having done my genealogy back several generations on both sides, I’ll take mod cons (especially washing machines and vacuums), vaccinations and dentistry over all the picturesque costumes in the world.
Lucky you, living in the 21st century mean you can wear the historic costumes without actually having to live without the Mod Cons.
Hopefully: the economy is not always our friend, Heaven knows.
I don’t wear historic costumes, ED, but I do consider myself fortunate: my paternal grandmother was taken out of school, age 13, when her mother died, worn out from childbirth. She reared her three little sisters, and kept house, without electricity or running water, cooking and cleaning and doing the laundry for five people. Rural life was rough if you didn’t have money; still is.
I loved the PBS house shows; even now, I’d rather watch those than any Big Three network reality show. I’d been curious about this one; it turned up in one of my browsing sessions but I skipped when I realized who the producers were. After this review, it doesn’t feel like I have missed anything. I wonder whatever became of that nice young couple from Frontier House and how they might react to the inexplicable bonuses here.
Sometimes I think that the families on these shows are specifically chosen for their whininess, as if there wouldn’t be any fun in watching people earnestly buckling down to recreate an earlier lifestyle. Wonder how these folks would handle the kind of crises that filled real frontier families’ lives–locust invasions, drought, long bitter winters, attacks by hostile natives, etc! Good thing our forefathers and -mothers were made of sterner stuff! I think the blog has mentioned programs that have historians doing the recreations, really trying to be accurate and “getting into” the past, and much more worth watching than this stuff IMO.
The Brits, who really get the kinder, gentler reality TV style we crave, had a great history farm series with historians and experiential archeologists dressing up. They’d tell you the academic history of something, then try it in period, and tell what else they were learning while trying. Several were set in public living history museums, so my future travel list is full. It was fabulous (and my dream)!
Yep, we’ve talked about those before!
https://frockflicks.com/top-5-frock-flick-adjacent-comfort-watches/
Heh heh, yeah, I loved Frontier House when I was a kid! I had a crush on Nate Brooks, the young man who built the house with his father and got married on the show; I thought he was dreamy.
Maybe I’ll try this the next time I sign up for HBO. I’m currently in the middle of a Dr Quinn marathon anyway lol
I too love these kinds of shows. Haven’t watched this and likely won’t. I found the British ones to be better in that the people usually weren’t so whiny and lame. ;)
I remember watching one (can’t remember the show?) that was in a manor house. The people picked to be the “landed” family loved it, and those stuck working downstairs, hated it. I guess it’s always better to be rich no matter the time period.
Well, that was easy to find: it was literally called Manor House on PBS.
And you’ve even already done a post about it: Time Travel With the “House” Series. Definitely the show that cured me of my romantic notions of the past, because if I had been living back then, I would’ve been working in the scullery because I don’t come from a wealthy family. And it would have SUCKED to live back then