![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Supersizers Go....
Feb. 20th, 2014 10:56 amThe Supersizers Go... follows a pair of English people as they spend a week living in different times of (mostly British) history, ranging from medieval times to Restoration to Victorian England to the privations of wartime, to the trends of the 80s (plus some other times; there are 12 episodes in all). Their focus is on the food, clothes, and lifestyle of some particular pair of people (pretty much always people of means; starving in any age doesn't give nearly as scope).
It's a lot of fun, with social history and humor wrapped up together. All the details are done well, with different period-appropriate fonts for each menu (read aloud, image behind each name; my one quibble with the show is that there seems to be no links to the actual recipes they used), for example. The dressing up showed interesting clothes (though somehow, the 50s look made both of them look fairly awful), and the narrative included activities that were period-relevant, and discussion not only about the reactions to food and dress, but some of what went on politically in the period as well (that were likely to influence food, dress, or social mores, especially).
Yay for social history!
Oh, and the title? They check in with doctors before and after each week to determine what effect each time's diet has had on them. Only one week, but still interesting.
(I know there are no plans for further episodes, but the possible scope outside British history (plus the French Revolution and Roman times) is enormous (Central America before the Spaniards? Indian subcontinent before the British Raj? an Nth dynasty Chinese court? in the Malian Empire? etc., etc., etc.,). I'd love to see more of this type of show.)
It's a lot of fun, with social history and humor wrapped up together. All the details are done well, with different period-appropriate fonts for each menu (read aloud, image behind each name; my one quibble with the show is that there seems to be no links to the actual recipes they used), for example. The dressing up showed interesting clothes (though somehow, the 50s look made both of them look fairly awful), and the narrative included activities that were period-relevant, and discussion not only about the reactions to food and dress, but some of what went on politically in the period as well (that were likely to influence food, dress, or social mores, especially).
Yay for social history!
Oh, and the title? They check in with doctors before and after each week to determine what effect each time's diet has had on them. Only one week, but still interesting.
(I know there are no plans for further episodes, but the possible scope outside British history (plus the French Revolution and Roman times) is enormous (Central America before the Spaniards? Indian subcontinent before the British Raj? an Nth dynasty Chinese court? in the Malian Empire? etc., etc., etc.,). I'd love to see more of this type of show.)