Long Live the corner shop!

How a Sheffield family found being at the heart of the community in the latest Back in Time for…

- Hannah Davies

Over the past five years, we’ve learned all about the history of the school, the factory, Christmas and our mealtimes thanks to BBC2’s fascinating Back in Time for… series.

But now it’s the turn of that great British institution, the corner shop, to take the spotlight, as presenter Sara Cox and social historian Polly Russell help another family time-travel through the decades.

Over five episodes, the Ardern family, who come from Sheffield, will experience first-hand what life was like as a shopkeeper from 1897 and the Victorian era, through to wartime rationing in the 1940s and stocking the shelves with Pot Noodles, Smash Hits and Dip Dabs during the 1980s and 1990s!

Here, dad Dave, 57, mum Jo, 50, and their three children, 21-year-old son Sam, daughter Olivia, 16, and youngest son Ben, who turned 13 during filming, tell TV Times about the pressure of being a shopkeeper in Victorian times and how the whole experience brought them closer…

Why did you decide to take part?

Jo: We’d had quite an up-and-down year. My mum and Dave’s mum were ill and I turned 50. So I decided to apply on a whim, not thinking for one minute we’d get picked!

Olivia: We’d watched some of the Back in Time for… series before and loved them, so when Mum signed us up for it, I thought it would be an amazing experience!

What did you hope to learn?