Technology slumming in the 70s

TV review

Growing up, Back to the Future was one of my favourite films or, more accurately, trilogies.
I love the idea of time travel and, as anyone knows, if you could time travel, due the elliptical nature of the waves or some such scientific mumbo jumbo you could not travel to different countries or indeed places. Oh no, if you could time travel you would be as Doc and Marty were, stuck in the same place.
See, the flux capacitor, along with the uranium (or rubbish power source in the second instalment) does not act like a teleporter, transporting you to any place you like. It is simply a device that gives you enough power to travel along time lines.
Or so they say.
I am not an expert but I do like the films. Where is she going with this you ask? Well it’s simple. I want to time travel. I want to flit between times and see what life was like for those in the past. Ideally, I would like to go back to Regency times or the early industrial revolution, but it seems it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. With this knowledge hanging heavy on my heart, I must content myself with a more recent decade – the 1970s. And how do I get there? Well it’s simple. I merely tune into BBC 4 every Tuesday and watch an English family as they are are transported through the 10 years of the 70s one day at a time.
Electric Revolution: Electric Dreams is a programme that has seen the Sullivan-Barnes family’s life robbed of all its modern-day technologies and sent to live as the equivalent family in the 1970s would have lived. Each day the family moves forward a year until they reach the 1980s.
This programme is part of the BBC’s look at the incredible impact of technology on our everyday lives.
It has been a most interesting series from a viewer’s point and has opened my eyes to the technological void that was 1971 and just how quickly it has all changed.
For many at that time what we consider run-of-the-mill tech these days was only possible in science-fiction and the idea that someday, we would all use mobile phones or have computers in our pockets, seemed farcical. Yet, only four decades later, we are living that technological fantasy.
The family enduring this experiment have been most entertaining to watch and have really taken to it. Both parents and children find it just as hard to adapt but, in many ways, it is the parents who make the more interesting viewing.
Children are more adaptable and, although they are not always happy about the fact that they do not have the technology that they once had, they kind of get on with it. The parents, on the other hand, lived through this time and have experienced it before. However, I thought it was interesting to watch the way in which they have reacted to the change.
This week’s episode saw the family come into a new decade and the beginning of normality again. The 1980s saw the introduction of the home computer and games consoles into the average household. It also saw the introduction of the microwave, CDs and video cameras. The first mobile phones were available soon after as well.
While this programme has been highly entertaining and the attention to detail has been enormous, I have found it a little irksome in that I felt that the family had too much technology too soon. There is no way that a family on average wages in the 1970s could of afforded all of that technology. I remember getting our first PC, an Amiga 500 for Christmas in 1989 – a momentous occasion, believe me.
Many of my friends didn’t get a computer/games console until Ennis won the Information Age Town award and as for microwaves and mobile phones – well, I was in my teens. Most houses had televisions growing up but other things like VCRs and CD players were just too expensive for the ordinary family and were often bought on hire purchase or rented for special occasions.
I think this aspect of technology would have made an already interesting programme more interesting. The 1970s and 80s were recessionary times and while this technology was available, it was hard for ordinary people to get their hands on it.
However, despite this criticism this was a very entertaining and worthwhile time travel exercise by the Beeb.
Celebrity chefs… I’ve had my fill. I haven’t watched a lot of Masterchef the Professionals because of this and who is to blame? It’s the short, Londoner with the spiky blonde hair, Jamie Oliver.
I am tired, tired, tired of the pukka prat and his road trips around the world. I no longer care for his blend of travel, cookery and O’Gorman’s People programming. He has spent the last six weeks traveling around America, unlocking the diverse palate and plate of the USA’s many regions.
I don’t know if it’s just that I find him and his ways objectionable or if it is just that Stephen Fry did it already and so much better.
Okay, there was no actual cookery aspect to Fry’s programme but I am pretty sure that there was cooking on it and that was good enough for me. I just find Oliver to be a bit bland as a presenter. I would like him to spice it up a bit and by that I don’t mean by trying to ‘sex’ it up. I would just like the whole programme to be more lively and entertaining.
I feel that he doesn’t really interact with the people he meets and I would like if he was a little more entertaining. Anyway, I am sure due to the usually high repeat rate of Jamie’s shows there will be plenty of opportunity for me to change my mind about him.

One to watch
This week marks the debut of the new Stargate series – Stargate Universe. It began on Tuesday night and looks amazing. Hopefully, fan of the show that I am, I will not be disappointed. Check it out on Sky One on Tuesday evenings.