Name: Homes Under the Hammer.
Age: 13 years.
Transmission: 10am on weekdays, BBC One, and repeated endlessly
Appearance: Like a discount Property Ladder.
Um, could you clarify that please? You mean you don’t watch Homes Under the Hammer?
Some of us are otherwise engaged at 10am on weekdays. OK. Well, you remember how on Property Ladder Sarah Beeny used to spend an hour following a first-time developer making a complete balls-up of an old house?
How could I forget? They’d always spend too much, take forever, then get undeservingly rescued by rising house prices. So Homes Under the Hammer is a bit like that, except it has three presenters – Lucy Alexander, Martin Roberts and Dion Dublin – who follow three developers, who are usually just boringly competent, buying the place at auction then emerging a few months later with a profit of 20 grand.
I see. But at least you get to watch old buildings being transformed into lovely homes. Isn’t that the point? Kind of. Although it’s more a case of watching rotting shacks being transformed into habitable dwellings. Plus you don’t get to watch the actual renovations but yes, I suppose so.
Sounds like an hour of great telly. Kind of. It’s also incredibly repetitive. You know, when they show you what they’re going to show you, then show it to you, then show you a reminder of what they showed you 10 minutes ago, like the televisual equivalent of reusing a teabag. Meryl Streep is a huge fan.
Haha! Very funny. I always enjoy your sideways look at recent events. No seriously, three-time Academy Award winner and 19-time nominee Meryl Streep loves it. “I’m addicted to everything where they do real estate,” she told Graham Norton.
Addicted? That may be an exaggeration, although she says she also loves Grand Designs and Come Dine With Me, so she clearly knows her way around the backwaters of British reality television repeats.
All at different times of day as well. Are we quite sure she’s not researching a new role as a home counties pensioner? If anyone could handle that, it’s Streep.
Do say: “I loved her in Glazer versus Glazer.”
Don’t say: “I preferred Sophie’s Joist.”
