A British TV series trying to recreate life for tenant farmers on monastery lands during the early Tudor period, prior to Henry VIII, who despoiled the monasteries to enrich the Crown and then parceled off the land to the aristocracy.
What's pleasant about it is that it is not cynical and flip about early 16th century life, including religion.
It's common for Brit (and other Western) programs on foreign cultures to be obsequiously accomodating and worshipful, while stories about the Western past, especially the Christian Middle Ages, take the contemptuous tone of a smart-assed high schooler.
This is a pleasant change.
I am fascinated by programs that make clear the myriad ways in which our ancestors had to live without so many things we take for granted.
(But, of course, in re-creating the Pentecost market day in a rural area, we have a Black woman as part of the scene...Yeah, England in 1500 was choc a bloc with African farmers..)
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