AllMovie

This three-part PBS "reality" series was assembled by the same people responsible for 1900 House, in which a typical 21st century British family attempted to live in the manner of their ancestors of 100 years earlier. This time around, three modern American families (drawn from 5,000 applicants) endeavored for five months to experience life as Montana homesteaders, circa 1883. After an arduous journey by wagon train to an undeveloped 160-acre patch of land, the three clans (one from Boston, one from Tennessee, one from California) were forced to forsake the creature comforts of the modern age and literally live off the soil, making their own clothes, churning their own butter, molding their own candles, and so on. PBS' ad campaign for the series went the Survivor route by overemphasizing the hardships facing the latter-day pioneers and dwelling upon the friction and hostilities stirred up by a new set of family values and interrelationships. The first two-hour episode of Frontier House was aired on April 29, 2002.