Texas Ranch House

The latest installment of the ongoing PBS reality TV series that plops modern people into houses furnished in such chronologically alien locales as Victorian England and Colonial New England to see how successfully they can acclimate (most recent, see reviews of Regency House Party [VL-3/05] and Manor House [VL-9/03]), Texas Ranch House places 15 volunteers onto a cattle ranch in post-Civil War Texas, where they must work together to collect and sell enough wild longhorns to turn the spread into a profitable operation. Tensions soon arise between the owner—a real-life hospital administrator—and the hands, who generally consider their boss to be inept and controlled by a strong-willed wife. And fairly quickly the tale turns into something like a season of Survivor, with some staff being summarily dismissed or choosing to leave, while new faces are added and old ones moved into new jobs. A narrator adds tidbits of historical data for context while a variety of staged problems arise—Indians intervene on a couple of occasions, and a contingent of Buffalo Soldiers arrive to provide a market for the cattle—but it's the personal problems that dominate, and since the cast (with few exceptions) prove to be a fairly lackluster bunch, viewer interest wanes over the long haul (eight hours!), especially given the sluggish pacing (things move slowly in the Texas heat, but the story doesn't have to). Matters perk up a bit in the final episode, when the ranch divisions reach the breaking point and the players are graded by experts, but overall Texas Ranch House feels as exhausting as the culminating cattle drive. DVD extras include audition tapes and additional “video diary” entries. More interesting in concept than execution, this is optional. Aud: H, C, P. (F. Swietek)