I’ve spent more hours of my one wild and precious life watching the Netflix reality show Selling Sunset than should be legal. But there’s something soothing about its take on luxury real estate: the vapid discussions between the estate agents, the midcentury houses gleaming in California sunshine, the just-for-the-camera catfights. Watching it must be what it would feel like to drop your brain into one of Wim Hof’s ice baths – a short, sharp shock (“wait, people live like this?!”) followed by a blissful zoning out.
The show was inspired by the daddy of this genre, Million Dollar Listing, which was broadcast on the US channel Bravo. In things coming full circle, Million Dollar Listing spawned the career of celebrity broker Ryan Serhant. Now Serhant – a slick, silver-haired 39-year-old – stars in Owning Manhattan, a new Netflix series about the goings-on at his agency SERHANT (all caps, naturally).
When we first meet Serhant, for some reason he’s shirtless, in a towel and brushing his teeth in a luxury bathroom. In voiceover he tells the inspiring story of how one day his grandpa pointed to a cemetery and told him that it held the greatest people in the world, but little Ryan would never know who they were. Why? Because “cemeteries are full of wasted potential”, according to grandpa. “That’s a lot to say to a 10-year-old kid,” says Serhant, with more insight than he’ll show across the rest of the series.
Yet that was the moment he realised he “didn’t want to lead an ordinary life”. Since then Serhant has been raring to go. So much so that in one scene, his car door is open and his foot is almost on the ground before the vehicle has even stopped. He lives such a busy life that we get scenes where his wife jets off to Greece (again) in his absence, but the viewer is encouraged to think this is a good thing. Real estate got Serhant his lovely wife and child, he tells both her and us. So if he barely gets to spend time with them, that’s ... grand? Maybe that’s some of his grandpa’s logic seeping through.
There’s little about Serhant’s lifestyle or his company that’s relatable. But that’s the key to shows such as Owning Manhattan. There must be an aspirational gulf between the viewers’ puny little lives and the lives of the tanned, lithe, impossibly rich people we see on screen. We need to want what they have, and we must be willing to embrace the envy.
But the thing is, in order to keep watching a show like this, it has to score a decent amount on what I like to call the shiteometer. You have to give at least a bit of a shite about the people in it – whether that’s because you detest them or find them just about bearable – or what the show is trying to sell you. The shiteometer dips particularly low for me with Owning Manhattan.
For starters, there’s a distinct lack of real drama. Serhant claims in the first episode that he wants SERHANT to be the number one real estate agency in New York, and that if he fails (he’s currently number six), he’ll go bankrupt. But you get the sense that his wallet will always be chunky.
There are moments where the show tries to introduce Succession vibes, with dramatic choral music and a sweep of strings, but this adds as much energy as Logan Roy adds love to family gatherings. Even the relationships between the agents lack bite. They’re all trying to outdo each other, but the stakes don’t feel high enough. The show’s enfant terrible is the stunningly named Jonathan Nørmølle, a Swedish tattooed youngster who positions himself as the edgy alternative to the lads in suits who make up most of SERHANT’s male cohort. But he comes off as petulant rather than truly bad.
His colleagues include a former Broadway performer who carries her dog in her luxury handbag, an apprentice who’s stuck selling tiny rental properties, and a couple who don’t seem to really enjoy working together. You wouldn’t want to be friends with any of these people, but you probably wouldn’t bitch behind their backs about them either.
Part of my ennui also comes down to the eye-watering prices of the luxury properties. Soon the numbers cease to make sense, especially when your electricity bill arrives in your inbox mid-show. And tragically, too many of the gaffs are ... boring. On SERHANT’s list is a massive penthouse in Central Park Tower, the highest residence in the world. This “trophy” penthouse costs $250 million, but is a bit meh. Plus, the show indicates the people interested in it only want a soulless summer abode to pop into, so why should viewers care who gets it?
Though Serhant spouts a lot of testicle-punching phrases, he comes off as a fairly decent guy
In addition, New York’s weather likes to make its turbulent presence felt. Selling Sunset is bathed in perpetual sunshine, but in Owning Manhattan, an agent talks to a potential buyer on a terrace awash with rainwater.
You get the feeling that to Serhant, his business doesn’t exist if there isn’t a show about it. But for all his talk of “walking the plank” and “Make-Money Mondays” (there’s an incredible scene where he shouts this phrase out the car window and someone on the street shouts back “f*** you!” in return), it’s hard to care enough about what’s going on.
Serhant is a clever man. A former actor, he knows all about the power of self-promotion. And though he spouts a lot of testicle-punching phrases, he comes off as a fairly decent guy. He’s cleverly set up a production studio in-house, but the SERHANT podcast proves to be the downfall of one particular agent.
As he says himself, “If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind”. But Owning Manhattan doesn’t really move the reality TV-estate agent world on much. If anything, it’s more boring than its predecessors. By the end of episode one, I did not care whether the multimillionaire is burning himself out, or about the lack of time he spends with his glamorous wife. I am wondering if that wash I have put on is ready to be thrown on the line.
Your capability for enjoying Owning Manhattan will greatly depend on your ability to stomach the cost of the often surprisingly underwhelming properties, as well as the fact the agents’ commission is many, many multiples of the Irish industrial wage. This show is handy to have on in the background, as a sort of white noise. But if your shiteometer is anything like mine, you might struggle to make your way to episode two.
