Frontier House

A companion volume to the new PBS series Frontier House offers behind-the-scenes details on the planning, production, casting, and filming of the six-hour series, along with informative sidebars offering historical perspectives, profiles of real-life settlers, and the social and cultural aspects of life of pioneers in the American West.

Simon Shaw is the series producer of Frontier House. He has spent more than twenty years as a television and radio producer for such prestigious organizations as the BBC. In 1999 Shaw joined Wall To Wall, under the leadership of Managing Director Alex Graham, one of the United Kingdom's leading independent producers of quality factual programming and drama. There Shaw had a unique opportunity to immerse himself in a lifelong fascination: trying to understand the everyday experiences of life in the past. First up was the award-winning television series 1900 House, in which a British family spent three months enduring the ups and downs of life in a Victorian home. After taking on World War II in The 1940s House, Shaw was thrilled to explore the settlement of the American West for public television. The experience left him with a deeper love of beautiful scenery but an even greater appreciation of modern life's luxuries.