The original colonists lived lives of sheer spartan hell: primitive cabins, bitterly cold weather, chamber pots for toilets, backbreaking labor, isolation, deprivation, indentured servitude, public punishment for the slightest infraction -- oh yeah, and then they died young. [...] PBS managed to find enough people in their wrong mind to make "Colonial House," a thought-provoking and altogether fascinating exercise in unscripted voyeurism that leaves us realizing just how lucky we are to be living in 2004. While "Frontier House" (following three modern families in the equivalent of 1880s Montana) was uncommonly nasty in its depiction of intrafamilial war, all of these series from PBS represented reality you can feel good about watching, that didn't leave you feeling in need of a good hot shower.

Subscribe to the Hollywood Reporter and see the entertainment industry from its best angle: the inside looking out. Complete access to real-time news and exclusive analysis that goes behind the scenes from film to television, home video to digital media.

   Subscribe now.