I’m a few minutes into The Great House Revival (Sunday, RTÉ One) before I start worrying that the title is a bit lofty and grand (in the British, not Irish, sense). So I start thinking of more suitably Irish titles for a property programme. The Mediocre Hovel Resuscitation, perhaps. Or what about I Don’t Need to Do Anything with This Property I’m Renting It Out for My Pension? (That’s a very short show.)
Then I start thinking of even more culturally specific titles: Feck the Preservation Order, Let’s Knock It and Build an Office Block; or maybe If We Just Leave It Derelict We’ll Make Money on the Land Value Alone.
The latter two titles you will recognise from the Proclamation of Independence, the former two from Éamon de Valera’s 1937 constitution (aka Bungalow Bliss). The whole lot are chapter headings in Michael Collins’s unpublished memoir Now We’ve Got our Independence how Do We Make some Money out of these Suckers?
Maybe it’s about time we got a home-makeover show that featured not upwardly mobile suburbanites with hope in their hearts but international property developers, vulture funds and institutional landlords with line graphs where their souls should be. I’d watch that.
We already have Great House Revival. What we need now is Feck the Preservation Order, Let’s Knock It and Build an Office Block
‘It’s boobing out!’ Kim Kardashian cries. Irish Times readers will recognise this reference to the Heaney poem of that name
Holly Willoughby is well used to troublesome co-hosts. Bear Grylls may like insects and urine, but he’s not Phillip Schofield
‘Young men aren’t just b****rds running around on their bikes ... everyone has their own dreams’
Hugh Wallace, a vision in big spectacles and a floral shirt, could still present it. He wouldn’t mind. He’s a pretty chilled out and accepting kind of guy.
He is, in many ways, the anti-Bannon. While Dermot Bannon, my muse and my king, is a tortured and Christ-like figure, bleeding for the nation’s architectural sins and driven to the edge of madness by those aesthetically challenged buffoons – the Irish people – Hugh Wallace is a detached and Zen-like Buddha who is pretty sanguine about our inane design decisions and thus sleeps easy at night.
They are a study in contrasts. Bannon is perpetually martyred by us. Wallace is delighted with our shenanigans. Together this could be a recipe for perfection. I’d love to see them do a show together. I’d love to see them raise a child together, to be honest. And by “a child” I mean, specifically, me. Could this be a programme for RTÉ’s autumn line-up?
In The Great House Revival, however, Wallace does not shadow shadowy property moguls or coparent a 49-year-old journalist with Bannon. Instead he wanders the country, apparently on foot, to meet regular folk who are in the midst of bankrupting themselves by refurbishing ruins.
Once upon a time the likes of Wallace had to argue with people before adding fancy stuff – pergolas, tiles, windows, lightbulbs, a roof – but now highfalutin notions are endemic
He does so not to make sceptical noises as they outline their hearts’ desire. He ums and uhs like an American podcast host, narrates like Seamus Heaney, if the poet were an estate agent, and looks to the camera from time to time, like Jim from The Office. I like him a lot.
In this week’s episode Wallace visits Aoibheann MacNamara, a Galway restaurateur who is trying to patch up a rundown cottage in Co Clare – or, as Wallace calls it, “a dilapidated herdsman cottage exposed to the elements in this rocky nowhereland”.
A “rocky nowhereland” is a pretty good description of how most Dubliners see the west of Ireland; most of the capital city will be nodding their heads and possibly mouthing along at this point.
Wallace says this while dressed in a flat cap and wellies, salting the wound with some mocking culchie appropriation. Beneath this rural costumery he is, of course, wearing his trademark spectacles and floral shirt. I assume that, much like Clark Kent, when he’s not wearing his trademarks no one recognises him. For all we know he might be in the room with us right now.
Once upon a time the likes of Wallace had to argue with people before adding fancy stuff to a property – pergolas, tiles, windows, lightbulbs, a roof – but times have changed. Now highfalutin notions are endemic in the Irish population and the arguments on display are largely just about different varieties of good taste.
Wallace likes patterns and having windows in particular places. MacNamara references Derek Jarman and favours the type of all-white minimalist panopticon beloved of the post-Catholic Irish. Flood that house with light! Banish shame! Open up that view but, more importantly, give the cows and that weird yokel herding them a bit of a show!
The Great House Revival has to be filmed over a long time because having a house done up is painstakingly slow and expensive. I think that’s why we like watching it. Once the Catholic church waned, it was clear the Irish people would need to reinvent purgatory as home improvement.
Glamorous estate agents buy and sell mansions to the uberwealthy while ignoring human-rights violations and discrimination
And so we follow along to the usual liturgy of budgeting (we drop to our knees), the donning of hard hats (we bless ourselves), the visiting of other homes (we genuflect) and the inevitable arguments with the builder (we are visited by the Holy Ghost and start babbling in tongues) before Wallace eventually announces that Mass is ended and we may go in peace (we get brunch and scan the property section of The Irish Times).
The Great House Revival is the story of nice people on a budget who have idiosyncratic taste and a sense of ethics (MacNamara fosters sustainability and biodiversity around her property).
In contrast, Dubai: Buying the Dream (Wednesday, Channel 4) features glamorous estate agents buying and selling gold-accessorised, nightclub-style mansions to the uberwealthy while ignoring the human-rights violations and discrimination that make Dubai’s real-estate boom possible in the first place.
I suppose it could be feasible to watch this as a portrait of glib, banal immorality, a sort of capitalist reality-TV version of The Zone of Interest, with the maltreatment of foreign construction workers out of shot. I think it should be re-edited with this in mind.
Another show about wealthy monsters introduced me recently to a new acronym for westerners flourishing in culturally exploitative situations: LBHs, or losers back home. The new series of Mike White’s textured and funny The White Lotus (Monday, Sky Atlantic/Now) is set at a Thai branch of the international White Lotus luxury-hotel chain.
While the theme of the first series of the drama was class and the theme of the second was sex, this one aims its sights on the wellness industry, with its moneyed grotesques seeking enlightenment while basking in luxury. (Sounds like The Irish Times’s ABC1 readership to me.)
The new cast includes the brilliant Parker Posey, Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs and Carrie Coon. Not since Upstairs, Downstairs or our own schools-rugby coverage has someone depicted unthinking entitlement so darkly.
It follows the same template as the previous two series, but it’s still in pretty good shape. I’m not sure it needs to be refurbished just yet. But what say you, Hugh Wallace? Hey, don’t just adjust your glasses and look at the camera sceptically, Wallace. Tell me what you really think!
