The new recruits are actress Zoe Lucker, former home office minister Anne Widdecombe, impressionist Alistair McGowan, world champion hurdler Colin Jackson, Outnumbered's Tyger Drew-Honey and presenter Miquita Oliver. Their first 24 hours lands them in the filth and grime of the city dump - the dustyard. Here, they must sift through mountains of dirt, rotting vegetables and old bones. With thousands of people flooding into cities to find work in the new factories, there is a whole lot of horse manure and human effluent to clean up.
With no break since leaving the filth of the dustyard, Alistair McGowan, Ann Widdecombe, Miquita Oliver, Zoe Lucker, Tyger Drew Honey and Colin Jackson are now up against the clock in the age before the dawn of the railways. Their second 24 hours finds them in the 19th century equivalent of the motorway service station - the rural coaching inn. There are horses to be groomed, coaches cleaned, tack polished, guests to be fed, linen to be laundered, chamber pots emptied and landlord's scams to be learned. With two more days, two more workplaces, two more episodes to go, who will have the stamina to survive the long hours and relentless grind that was the lot of the Victorian working poor?
The celebrities face their third 24 hours in Victorian Britain, this time facing the gruelling inequality of the factories that were the powerhouses of the industrial revolution. Amidst the bottle kilns of the Staffordshire potteries, it's not just the machinery that's revolutionary! With no break since leaving the 19th-century equivalent of the motorway services - the coaching inn - Alistair McGowan, Ann Widdecombe, Miquita Oliver, Zoe Lucker, Tyger Drew-Honey and Colin Jackson now have kilns to keep alight, clay to prep and pots to make. It's hard work for very little pay and dissent is in the air. Will our apprentice potters, like their forebears, take up the call to arms for better working conditions and pay?
The final and most challenging episode yet of this four-part living history series sees our six celebrities destitute and penniless in Victorian Britain. With no escape back to the 21st century since they were sacked from the potteries, they now have no food and no shelter. There's only one place left for them - the workhouse. Stripped of their belongings and identities, wearing the workhouse uniforms and rough wooden clogs, the time travellers, now inmates, are put to work. In a world of no rewards, only punishment, the workhouse master and matron punish anyone who dares break the rules and regulations. Launching yet another rebellion, former minister for prisons Ann Widdecombe gets thrown into solitary confinement. Our other inmates include actress Zoe Lucker, former world champion hurdler Colin Jackson, impressionist Alistair McGowan, Outnumbered actor Tyger Drew-Honey and presenter Miquita Oliver. When world champion athlete Colin Jackson admits the work is too much for him, what chance do our other inmates stand of proving they have what it takes to work their way out of the workhouse? Presenter Fi Glover and historian Ruth Goodman help drive them through the age that laid the foundation for modern Britain and finally, after 96 hours trapped in the 19th century, back into the 21st.
