‘Colonial House’

I caught the first hour of PBS’ Colonial House, and it’s pretty good. In the tradition of the various other “House” series, the idea is to take a group of people and recreate some historical setting; here it’s an English settlement in Maine, circa 1628. There’s a lot of educational narration (did you know that once the Mayflower arrived in Massachusetts, the women and children stayed aboard the ship for two more months while the men began to set up the colony?), so it’s as much history lesson as it is unscripted drama. (I am loath to call it a “reality show.”) By the way, the queer factor: among the colonists are two gay men. (The photo caption in the Blade article is a little misleading; it implies their roles in the project are “written” as gay, which is not the case.)