• Dec.3. 2010



What’s not to like about a programme that combines nosing about in people’s homes with costume drama? At Home with the Georgians (BBC Two) was as British as you could get, combining two national fixations in one package. With pretty actresses in bosomy dresses talking about things like stone-coloured paint, it was the apotheosis of property porn. Sadly, though, the answer to the original question is: quite a lot. This programme – the first in a series exploring how our attitudes towards our homes were shaped in the 18th century – was at times as annoying as banging your head repeatedly against a sash window.

To start with, I’m not sure I bought the programme's premise, which is that the Georgian era was somehow particularly significant or revelatory in terms of the relationship between man, woman and hearth. I’m sure that how Georgians felt about their homes tells us a lot about them, and us; but then you could probably learn just as much from a prehistoric cave or a Victorian parlour.

What’s more, the first episode – subtitled A Man’s Place – set out to prove that men were more into “fussing over interior decoration” in the Georgian era than they are now. As evidence, we were presented with a letter from a man to his fiancée in which he mentioned visiting a house that had one room “done up with paper”. If he’d said the paper was light emerald with a fern motif, I may have been convinced.