CARY DARLING | Opinion In shows, modern-day 'colonists' need to get a grip on the past

There are two types of reality TV.
Most viewers are familiar with the first. It usually involves a troupe of fame freaks sharing a house, chug-a-lugging dung-beetle shakes, sliming their way into a cushy job from a womanizing billionaire or trying to land a date/marriage proposal from someone they've never met. Many times these come down to one titillating thing: "the hook-up."
The other type is for those who generally shun the genre but will -- in the interest of history, of course -- watch individuals driven to the edge of madness as they are forced by producers to live like people in a bygone, pre-deodorant era. In this grittier PBS or BBC reality, participants certainly will have to choke down something terrible, but they're probably going to be too smelly to have any chance of hooking up afterward.
So, we've had "Frontier House," "1900 House," "Manor House" (set in Edwardian England) and "1940s House," and now from PBS comes the eight-hour, four-part "Colonial House," in which 17 people -- Yanks and Brits -- re-enact life in the American Colonies, circa 1628. If these shows are brainier and less glamorous than their commercial-TV counterparts, they still raise at least one of the same questions: Where DO they get these people?
'Colonial House'
"Colonial House" is no exception. At first, the group -- including singles and families such as the Wyers clan of Waco, Texas -- got along like this is a backyard barbecue in Mayberry. It's all dress-up and make-believe until it suddenly dawns on everyone that they really have to trade the 21st century for the 17th for four months.
What do you mean women and servants have no rights? D'oh! I have to get up at dawn to work in the fields and can't lounge around all morning? D'oh! I can't use profanity and I have to go to church on Sundays? D'oh!
I have to eat muskrat? D'oh!
Have none of these people read a history book?
Personal confession: There's no way I could survive anything beyond, say, "1997 House." But the whole idea is to fully experience history, appreciate what our forebears went through and be grateful for life today. That's hard to do if you're sipping Starbucks with your morning porridge.
He gets it
The one guy on "Colonial House" who seems to actually get it is Jeff Wyers. Head of the Waco family and a Baptist minister in his modern life, Jeff's into keepin' it real pilgrim. The producers wisely assigned him the role of governor of the colony, and it's up to him to enforce the 17th-century morality. This doesn't sit well with the others, especially the Voorhees family of Massachusetts, whose skinny-dipping contemporary ways probably would have had them being used as kindling at the nearest stake in the real 1628.
Of course, this type of conflict is grist for the reality-TV mill and helps make "Colonial House" as entertaining as its previous "House"-mates. But, next time, PBS, it might be intriguing to get a group of subjects who actually have a clue.
XCary Darling writes for Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Colonial House" continues at 8 tonight and Tuesday.