Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

PBS should have stopped this fiasco the moment the players refused to play by the rules of the 1600's. 20st century selfishness destroyed this program. What mattered to the players was not what they could do for the community, but how they could please themselves, yet stay in the game. The strict rules were ignored and mocked, which made nonsense of the entire production. In Colonial times you either went to church or you went to your death. The Colonists were highly religious people. That one family chose skinny-dipping over church services on Sunday was ludicrous. They should have stayed home and let another family experience this once-in-a-lifetime adventure. After getting to church you certainly wouldn't tell everyone you were homosexual and expect to survive. But a gay young man decided to out himself one morning prior to service. He was embraced 20th Century style, but would have been stoned 17th century style. He's another one who should have stayed home. Another young man, bored with the century, left the community and sought out a local pub, a serious no-no according to producers. He later returned to the colony, bragged about his adventures and picked up where he left off. Yawn. Tisdale, an African-American, couldn't handle the manual labor or his sudden desire to enslave others to do his work. He walked off the show with a frightening and depressing understanding of why slavery came into existence. The most offensive scene was when the local Indians paid the colonists a visit, only to berate the colonists for what their ancestors had done to "our people". That insulting conversation would never have taken place inside a homesteader's cabin while the homesteaders grinned and apologized for the white man's actions. As far as offering a peek into 1600 living, Colonial House offers little to nothing. A much better production was FRONTIER HOUSE in which the participants adhered to the rules and regs of the pioneer days.