A friend at work made me feel old yesterday. I told her we've been working our way through This Life on Love Film and she hadn't heard of This Life. So I explained tat it was about a group of lawyers in London who all live in a house together. Her immediate reaction to that was to ask if it was a reality show. And thinking about it later, I figured that by today's standards that does sound like a description of a reality show. But back in 1996 Big Brother only existed in a novel and we didn't have any kind of reality shows on TV here. (I think you may have had the Real World in the US then but there was nothing like that here.) The world was a very different place. In the show they don't have the Internet and everyone smokes, everywhere. In the shared house, in the pub, in the office. Can you imagine that now? A huge misunderstanding was created due to someone being delayed at work and not having a mobile phone for the other person to contact them. These days if that happened you'd just send a quick text and everyone would know where they stood.
I'm particularly enjoying the fashions. Anna has a penchant for cropped sweaters which I love as I had a red cable knit one from the Sweater Shop (remember that?!) which I wore to death! The gang held a party in a recent episode and Milly and Anna were both in vest tops with high waisted jeans, with the tops tucked in! Remember 1996? Bootcut jeans were just starting to make an appearance, I thought flares were a ridiculous relic of the 1970s (though I would be wearing them only a year or so later) and no one had heard of skinny, boyfriend or any other style that wasn't a tapered leg.
What do you remember about the late 1990s?
I adore This Life. We studied it at Media Studies A'Level (if that ages me too I don't care, I'm 30!) and it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. I'd happily sit down and watch the whole thing all over again :)
ReplyDeleteI'm loving it! I don't know why I didn't watch it back in the day. I do find some of the camera work a bit weird though - how the camera is all up in everyone's faces all the time. There's probably some fancy media term for that is there? :)
ReplyDeleteYes there is! I forget what it is but it's meant to make you feel much more like you are part of it, than say Eastenders for example (way back in 1998-2000 when I was at college) where it's very much like they are on stage performing for you. It was absolutely fascinating as a study and the programme itself was incredibly entertaining too. Enjoy!
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