Homes Under The Hammer
BBC 1
Buy It, Sell It, Bank It?
BBC 1
Dream Holiday Home
Channel 5
Relocation, Relocation
Channel 4
The Antiques Rogues Show
BBC 2
FINGER-WAGGING predictions that television property programmes would shrivel up and die of shame in the wake of the credit crunch were wildly optimistic. Not only have these shows not dropped from our schedules like swatted bluebottles, they are still buzzing about in there, as irritating as ever before. What’s more, they now have the brass nerve to claim they are needed more than ever, to “guide” us through the pitfalls of buying or selling in the housing slump they helped to create.
Daytime schedules are still stiff with daily doses of Homes Under The Hammer, in which various tatty dumps are snapped up at auction and renovated (repossessions are clearly helping out here) and Buy It, Sell It, Bank It? in which two amateur property developers compete to buy, tart up and sell on the same tatty dump for a juicy profit. The greed-is-good message survives and the only difference now is that even revamped properties end up rented out rather than cashed in.
Other survivors from the 1990s and noughties property boom are the interiors makeover shows such as Dream Holiday Home (designer upgrades for second homes) which merely get repeated ad nauseam, with a caption slapped over the closing credits to say “Prices correct at transmission in 2004” or whatever.
Meanwhile, Relocation, Relocation returns for a brand new series on
Channel 4. “We’re here to help our plucky trailblazers through the toughest market for a generation”, insisted Phil Spencer and Kirstie Allsopp, before introducing Stephanie and Dominic – a young couple so smug and financially secure that you wondered what possible help their story could be to anyone.
Far from needing help, these two soon had Phil and Kirstie in need of a stiff drink and a lie-down on the psychiatrist’s couch. Stephanie strutted about like it was still 2007 (or even 1987), complaining loudly that every house selected for them to inspect was not up to snuff and rejecting them for lumps in walls and dents in the floor. “I think you have OCD – you are certifiable”, snapped Kirstie (who is pregnant again, so allowed to be ratty).
Having demanded the most rigid of wish-lists, the couple then sneaked behind our backs and bought something completely unsuitable in the ad-break. It was hard to care where they ended up living – a caravan park in Southend seemed miles too good for them.
It was a relief to swear a new year resolution not to watch a property show ever again. Turning to BBC 2, it was much easier to empathise with the bizarre Greenhalgh family, whose true story was dramatised as The Antiques Rogues Show. True, they had broken the law by forging paintings, ceramics, jewellry and statues and duping antiques experts, museums and galleries into buying them for a small fortune. True, Shaun Greenhalgh still lived with his working-class parents at the age of 47 – a pair of octogenarian crooks who had high-jacked his life and artistic talents for their own benefit. But writer-director Norman Hull’s clever and sensitive script, combined with lucid performances by Peter Vaughan, Liz Smith and especially Jeremy Swift as Shaun, soon had you rooting for these Bolton scamsters.
Perhaps it was no bad thing that the greedy and pretentious world of art and antiques received such a loud and vulgar raspberry. The Greenhalghs had got away with it for 15 years simply because nobody wanted to challenge the system and rock the money boat. Sounds horribly familiar, doesn’t it?
Helen Chappell
