My first impressions of PBS’s Texas Ranch House 1867 are not the best – it seemed like about half the volunteers put themselves in the right mindset. To give you a quick back-story – PBS and the BBC have put together a series of shows where they take volunteers and put them in a historical setting. It might be 1940 London, or the American West of the 1870s. This one is set on a small West Texas ranch.
This time around they cast more people who would be more comfortable with the environment, but at the same time some of the people didn’t have the sense of urgency or duty that the environment should have encouraged. They had certain conditions that needed to be met (rounding up so many cattle, etc.), and the ranch owner seemed more concerned with doing chores for his wife than going out with the cowboys to round up cattle, and this after they are already down a man, as well as having a few days of downtime due to illness among several of them.
Maybe it’ll get better (if you missed the first two hours last night, it’ll be repeated in the upcoming weeks). It runs several more nights this week.