This time machine reality telly, possibly spawned by Giles Coren and Sue Pekins’ Supersized success, is getting slightly out of hand.
 

Another example arrived this week in the form of a Gregg Wallace-operated capsule that offered shopkeepers the chance to take on a business in Shepton Mallet, so long as they did it adhering to Victorian limitations. Though Wallace was barely onscreen, a voiceover – familiar as the faceless talker from The Apprentice - offered period detail and a guide through the show.

Bakers had to use antiquated machinery, grocers were bound to slow, on-the-spot preparation that kept shoppers on the premises for long periods and the butcher could only display meat for half an hour at a time, before returning his produce to the ice block shipped in at cost from Norway.

The blacksmith? Well – you might not have expected him to prosper, but once the local furniture enthusiasts got wind of his old tat, they flocked to buy it up. More often than not, he was too busy at the forge with his ‘boy’ actually mending stuff for the other shopkeepers to actually sell anything, but still managed to make a tidy profit. And shed a tear at his own brilliance.

Less fun for the bakers, who found themselves trying genuine rogue techniques out on their punters, like the habit of using sawdust to bulk up a standard loaf. Needless to say, the feedback wasn’t too admiring.

This looked, at first, like quite a tedious and predictable watch, but was made absorbing by strong historical fact-checks, nice, slow-paced editing and participants who were all thoroughly likable. Most thankfully of all, Gregg Wallace was employed not to bark about time limits and wet his underpants over the quality of the produce, but simply to observe and read out the takings at the end of the show.

Next week apparently sees them working in the period after the motor engine and car had been invented and popularised, which will impact their businesses in all manner of ways, no doubt. Considering the first episode showed how the community of Shepton Mallet was brought together by the back to basics approach of the olden days, I foresee a downward turn in spirits as fridge freezers, processed food and cheap electrical goods are slowly introduced into the equation as we move forward in time.