Season 1 • Episode 6
LatestTwo 21st Century families from Britain and Ireland are sent to see how they would cope had they been transported to New South Wales 200 years ago when it was a penal colony. Together with an Australian family and Aborginals they learn just how tough you needed to be to survive back then.
Production
Brutal authenticity: they actually starved them.
Writing
Social experiment design exposes class tensions perfectly.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Peak 2000s 'living history' reality boom—Colonial House, 1900 House, and this formed a genre of middle-class suffering as entertainment.
The Irish family's relative adaptability compared to British aristocrats wasn't accidental casting—it mirrored actual 1800s penal colony demographics where Irish convicts outnumbered free settlers.
AU
