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Back in Time for Tea

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Factual: Food & Drink

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The Ellis family see what life was like for working class families over the past 100 years

The Ellis family travel back in time to discover how changing food in the north of England reveals what life was like for working class families over the past 100 years.

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Sara Cox

Polly Russell

Emily Shields

Christina Nutter

Wall to Wall Media

Back in Time for Tea: Series 1: Episode 1

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Episode 1

Series 1

BBC Two - Back in Time for Tea, Series 1, Episode 1

The Ellis family's experience begins in 1918, when life for northern workers is tough.

The Ellis family travel back in time to reveal how life has changed for northern working-class families over the past 100 years. Their experience begins in 1918.

The Ellis family from Bradford are embarking on an extraordinary time-travelling adventure to discover how a transformation in the food eaten in the north of England can reveal how life has changed for northern working-class families over the past 100 years. The family's own home is their time machine, transporting them through a different era each week - from the sparse furnishings and meagre provisions of 1918 to the modern home comforts and bulging freezer of 1999. Guided through their time travel by Bolton-born presenter Sara Cox and social historian Polly Russell, everything the family-of-five experience - from the jobs they do to the food they eat - is based on historical data and spending surveys of the era. The Ellis family live through a time of dramatic change in the industrial north - experiencing everything from the mill to the mine, The Beatles to Thatcher and bland potato pie to the spicy delights of the curry capital of the UK.

Their experience begins in 1918. The war is over, but life for northern workers is tough. The family's spacious modern house has been cut in half and they are shocked to be living in a two-up, two-down with an outside toilet and tin bath. All except the youngest boy Harvey are employed by the local textile mill.

Tea must be cooked on the coal-fired range. Economical northern favourites such as rag pudding and Yorkshire tripe don't go down well with the family - some don't even stay down! In desperate times an illicit trip to the poacher means that mum is at least able to serve up some meat. This is a world where food provides essential fuel and community counts for everything - where old-fashioned gender roles hold true and nothing goes to waste.

Back in Time for Tea: Series 1

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