I rarely watch TV. I know this sounds like I live in a cave or like a weird humblebrag (Oh, I don’t watch frivolous Netflix! I’m much too busy with my hours of regular exercise, making all-organic meals from scratch, and volunteering for worthy causes!) but I just don’t fall into TV shows very much. I usually drift off to sleep or reach for my phone, so it’s always a nice surprise when I find I do really like a TV show.

I recently stumbled into these historical farm recreation shows that are basically just these happy history nerds trying out regular life in different historical periods: Tudor Monastery Farm, Edwardian Farm, Victorian Farm, and Wartime Farm. After researching daily life in that time period, Ruth and the boys set out to farm, cook, and just generally live using historical methods, and they have have such a good time making old crafts and recipes. 

There are usually three recreators, Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Alex Langlands, with Tom Pinfold instead of Alex a couple times. As Ruth and the boys try out these historical activities, they’re pretty blunt about how they’re doing — whether the work is frustrating or a historical recipe is nice. This is great, because I feel like a lot of popular history is either by someone who dreamily wishes they were born in the  glorious past, or it’s about how dirty / smelly / sickly / backwards everyone was back in the dark ages. Instead, the history nerds gamely try out historical ways of  life, and describe how it’s going.

I should warn you that these shows have some really gruesome moments. There aren’t any jumpscares or any scenes intended to frighten, but when they say it’s time to butcher the pig, skip ahead a few scenes because, well, they’re going to butcher the pig.

The first one I found is the Tudor Monastery Farm. We typically think of Henry VIII when we hear “Tudor” but this is under Henry VII, in 1500.  The year is actually not terribly important, since farm life in 1490 or whatever wouldn’t have been too different from 1460 or 1500, right? But it’s definitely pre-reformation Tudor times, you can see that in the role of the monastery. They also talk about the upcoming changes in the reformation, but mostly they try to live like Tudor tenant-farmers.  I loved this show, so I was delighted to find the book version, How To Be A Tudor, which was so interesting, and much more detailed.

All the Farm shows also hit the right difficulty of explanation, where I wasn’t confused about new terms and I didn’t feel condescended to. This is a hard tone to find. I think some of it is because the three history nerds seem to be excited and genuinely interested when they ask experts to show their crafts, or demonstrate something they’re making. Sometimes they have Prof. Ronald Hutton turn up to tell then about old ceremonies and customs, and he’s just as excited to recreate the ceremonial cutting of the last sheaf of wheat as they are.

My favorite is Wartime Farm (unfortunately, the only one that’s not part of  Amazon Prime), which covers British countryside life in WWII. This one doesn’t follow the usual full-calendar-year format of the other ones, instead it looks at the increases in rationing and local food production over the course of the entire war. They still wear historical clothes and do all the historical activities, like covering the windows with blackout curtains or canning with the WI. Also, the historians talk to people about their experiences, or their parents’ experiences, in the war.

Wartime Farm is weirdly perfect pandemic viewing. In a year when our shops had empty shelves and we were seriously limiting shopping trips, I enjoyed watching Ruth cook with canned goods and ingredient substitutions. And after watching people hoard TP and hand sanitizer last year, and gasoline last month, I really understood the fairness of the rationing books. (Yes, of course some people cheated, but the whole idea of rationed goods is that everyone gets something, instead of one guys buys up everything and everyone else is screwed.) A lot of the war effort, like blackout curtains against night air raids, only work because everyone is participating.

There’s also a Wartime Farm book, by Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn and Alex Langlands, that describes their activities. It’s not as in-depth as Ruth’s How To Be A Tudor or How To Be A Victorian, but still fun for a superfan who wishes the show went on much longer.