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The Block judges have a new series set in Europe – and they’re not the only ones.
or some kind of life-changing quest. They feature lucky contestants hoping to be recognised for their cooking or singing talents. Or average folk renovating a home or searching for a soulmate.
TheBut a spate of recent shows have upped the ante on a stalwart TV genre: the home renovation. They’ve set their sights on something more ambitious than plumping the cushions or installing the latest must-have kitchen gadget. What if you could up sticks, leave the nine-to-five grind behind and start a new life on the other side of the world?
Say, in a hilltop town in Tuscany; in a fairytale-worthy chateau in France; bottling your own wine in Spain; capping off a day on the tools with an Aperol spritz on a beach in Sicily? These schemes, which have been flooded with interest, allow non-residents to purchase rundown and abandoned houses in remote villages that are at risk of becoming ghost towns.
For a token sum, the houses can be purchased on the condition that they are renovated, to be used by foreigners looking for a life change, a holiday house or the chance to turn a tidy profit when the house is flipped. Admittedly, the appealing proposition masks some sobering facts. Across Europe, traditional villages are dying because of declining birthrates and ageing populations, inheritance laws, poverty, unemployment and industrialisation.
The TV shows these initiatives have spawned don’t make too much mention of this. But as armchair adventures go, they have an irresistible appeal.and Darren Palmer are getting their hands dirty. Blaze has purchased a €1 home, sight unseen, in a remote village in Sicily and enlisted Palmer to help make it habitable. It begins with a small, abandoned stone terrace in Castronovo, a hilltop village with a population of 2800.
With a budget of €210,000 , they set to work with an ex-pat British builder and most recently Greece.
Their shows follow a familiar template as they inevitably realise they under-estimated the scope of the tasks they face, call in local trades, explore the local sights and visit compatriots who have made the big move, then eventually congratulate themselves on their achievements. The main selling point of the hugely popular franchise is their easy camaraderie. Their on-screen chemistry is raucous and blue.
Despite the dust and racket, Holden always looks like she just stepped out of hair and make-up, while Carr constantly reminds us that he has no practical skills and will never waste the chance for a snarky pun or campy innuendo. It’s naff as hell and forgets at times that it’s actually a renovation show, but that doesn’t seem to bother its legion of fans in the UK and Australia.
Banjo Beale and Rohan Christopher are a couple of Australians who ended up in Scotland’s remote Hebrides after years of backpacking adventures and travel. In this series, they are turning a dilapidated 27-room mansion with no running water or electricity into a hotel on the tiny island of UlvaThe island has been owned since 2018 by local residents who want to bring life back to the remote backwater, the building overseen by a charitable trust.
This isn’t a cookie-cutter makeover show. Beale, who looks after the decorating side of things while Christopher tends to the tools, has a taste for the esoteric and unconventional. And Ulva, with just 16 residents and accessible only by ferry from the island Mull, is as far off the beaten track as renovation porn has ever travelled.
Their show is less an extended ad for the boutique hotel it is destined to become than a portrait of a remote farming community perched at the very edge of the world. When Australians are described as individualists with an adventurous streak, think of Beale and Christopher. This sprawling lifestyle show falls outside €1 schemes, but it nails the escapist fantasy that those other series play with.
Dick Strawbridge, an engineer and former lieutenant in the British army, and his flame-haired wife Angel purchased a derelict 45-room chateau in France. In between restoring the magnificent pile and raising two children, the couple indulge in their various and many hobbies, from tinkering and practical building to crafting, dressmaking and cookery.looks at Italy’s €1 scheme, via a hilltop town in Sicily called Mussomeli.
But it presents a far less telegenic vision of la dolce vita than what’s served up in. This is a village in decline, where houses are being bought not by cashed-up holiday-homeowners but by people priced out of more expensive European cities and the children of families who moved away.
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