'Regency House Party' plays the 1800s dating game

LOS ANGELES -- What kind of reality dating show is right for PBS? One with impeccable manners, of course, and a British accent.

Make it a period piece, and it's a perfect match.

"Regency House Party" weaves early 1800s science, medicine, politics and class and race relations in with the flirting.

The brief but influential Regency period, 1811-1820, was an age of dissolute indulgence framed by social rigidity.

"Regency House Party," airing at 8 p.m. on four consecutive Wednesdays starting Nov. 3, is part of PBS' "Hands-On-History" series.

The program gathers 10 single men and women in an English country manor and asks them to squeeze their 21st-century psyches and behavior into an alien society for two months.

They act as characters of the time, some in roles closer to their real lives than others: A dot-com entrepreneur becomes a naval captain, a hairdresser plays an army officer, a countess is a countess. The houseguests are to seek the best match possible -- which is to say the most financially and socially advantageous one.

The show is playful (listen for the strains of the "Dating Game" theme song) but not frivolous, said Jody Sheff, executive producer for Thirteen/WNET New York.

"If you were a woman or a man in the early 19th century, who you married and how you married was going to determine your entire life," Sheff said.

In place of the inflated, synthetic romance of network dating shows, PBS serves up a detailed look at a time and place made familiar by period artists such as novelist Jane Austen.

What can be discovered in Austen's works about how little freedom was allowed women, is made explicit in the PBS series.

As guests arrive at Kentchurch Court, they're given booklets containing rules of behavior for gentlemen and ladies. These are not suggestions.

"The etiquette of hand shaking is simple. A man has no right to take a lady's hand till it is offered. He has even less right to pinch or retain it. A young lady gives her hand, but does not shake a gentleman's, unless she is his friend."

That's for starters.

Women are instructed to remain within the house, perhaps trimming bonnets or simply beautifying themselves for dinner in revealing dresses, while men ride, hunt, gamble and just cut loose.

The ladies' real job, to land a spouse and quickly, is made clear.

"Marriage is the only honourable career open to a lady, the only means by which she can increase her wealth and status," the "Regency House" rules state.

Sheff hopes that viewers have their own "you are there" experience watching the show.

"My goal as a producer is always to be looking for the way I can really connect history with somebody's imagination and make them feel it's very three-dimensional and real."

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