Radio Times: Review by:; Mark Braxton

Dr Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, opens her busy, titbit-
rich story of British domestic life with a look at the living room. With her perky bob and posh vowels, Worsley whisks us through 700 years of social changes, from the hearth-centred communal spaces of medieval times to our own TV-dominated infotainment hubs.
It’s a journey of innovation (chimneys, glass, gas, electricity)
via swish, palatial digs and cosy tea parties. But when it all gets a bit National-Trust-brochure and status-obsessed, the programme tosses in a few moreish phrase origins and some delightfully eccentric, even Pythonesque graphics. Next week:
the bathroom.

About this programme

1/4. Lucy Worsley, chief curator of the Historic Royal Palaces, explores the British home over the past 800 years, meeting experts, historians and writers along the way. She begins by charting the evolution of the living room, experiencing life in a medieval great hall, holding a candle-lit party in a Georgian drawing room and finding out about the development of taste in a grand country house. She also discovers the impact of gas and electric lighting on Victorian parlours, and experiences 1950s-style leisure.