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TV REVIEWS
First Cut: Time Warp Wives, Friday 7.30pm, Channel 4 
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Have you ever watched the meticulously produced US drama Mad Men? Did it make you yearn for those easier, more naïve times – just four or so decades ago – when women stayed at home, looked glamorous, cooked for their men and generally led a more stress-free life? Well, this Channel 4 documentary will probably make you realise that what’s in the past should stay there – as well as reminding you that you can’t undo what’s gone before.
The premise of Time Warp Wives is to show that “all over Britain people are escaping the stress of modern life by retreating into the past”. (Full marks for Sweeping Generalisation of the Month).
It sets out to show us that there’s a way of escaping the credit crunch, the long commute and punishing office hours: you just adopt a lifestyle of your parents or grandparents, and life becomes sweet and easy again.
Joan from Staffordshire is only 35, but she’s stuck in a bygone era. She cooks her husband a breakfast every morning (porridge and home-made lemon curd), spends the rest of the day cleaning, baking and singing Doris Day songs to pensioners. As she explains, she was made redundant a few years ago and felt rejected by the modern world.
For Diane, another woman in her early 30s who sidestepped the 21st century, the trigger was a vintage fair she went to a few years ago: she soon turned her house into a shrine to the 1930s. Sammy is only 20, but she’d love to bring back ’40s values, or whatever she thinks they might be.
From Doris Day to eBay
Soon, however, the feeling of nostalgia and sympathy for these women is replaced by a sense of confusion. Why are they doing this? Are they deluded? Why are they hiding their microwaves, modern kettles and laptops from themselves? Why retreat into the Formica and Teasmade world if you obviously can’t live without eBay and succumb to the very modern illness of excessive shopping?
It’s a form of escapism, of course. But while for Joan and Diane the ‘50s and the ‘30s respectively might offer easier, less complicated lifestyles, for Sammy – whose parents divorced three years ago – the ‘40s are about more than just nice hair and make-up.
“It’s about keeping the family together,” she explains. “I always thought my parents would be together forever. I’ll never ever be that kid in the garden with my parents, having a barbeque again.”
And then she adds, with a hint of sadness in her voice: “If I lived in the ‘40s, I think that my parents would be together”.
by Michal Dzierza, Friday 8 August 2008
