The Ellis family from Bradford are embarking on an extraordinary time-travelling adventure to discover how a transformation in the food eaten in the north of England can reveal how life has changed for northern working-class families over the past 100 years. The family's own home is their time machine, transporting them through a different era each week - from the sparse furnishings and meagre provisions of 1918 to the modern home comforts and bulging freezer of 1999. Guided through their time travel by Bolton-born presenter Sara Cox and social historian Polly Russell, everything the family of five experience, from the jobs they do to the food they eat, is based on historical data and spending surveys of the era. The family live through a time of dramatic change in the industrial north - experiencing everything from the mill to the mine, the Beatles to Thatcher and bland potato pie to the spicy delights of the curry capital of the UK.