Can I just shock you? I like Grand Designs.
Which is to say, after slagging it off above, I've been watching a load of them with my wife (all 180 odd of them are available on 4od) and I've come round completely.
For the purposes of this thread, it's still of course just as middle class as ever, but I can appreciate more now just on the basis of how beautifully made it is. Firstly, the filming is beautiful. But on a level of TV ethics, it sticks with projects for years to see how they develop; there's none of the bullshit papering over the cracks of time you get with cheaply made or bargain hunting or poverty porn television. These days with TV it's really unusual to see how things develop over time – Grand Designs does this. Also, much TV from Come Dine With Me to The Apprentice manufactures conflict and set-pieces, and I don't think Grand Designs does that at all. The conversations are proper conversations. If there are personal conflicts, they explore them in another way. Kevin McCloud does actually get properly involved, quite literally mucking in on occasion. I think this kind of longterm engagement is increasingly rare in television, often with toxic consequences where people and places are fetishised, cheapened or misrepresented.
Obviously there's a central middle classness about the show in that it gives no sense how extraordinarily exceptional it is to be in a position to build your own house, or to take a year off from work, but it at least mentions debt, or environmental issues, etc, and treats the viewer as an adult to make up their own mind about it.
So yeah. Grand Designs.
Which is to say, after slagging it off above, I've been watching a load of them with my wife (all 180 odd of them are available on 4od) and I've come round completely.
For the purposes of this thread, it's still of course just as middle class as ever, but I can appreciate more now just on the basis of how beautifully made it is. Firstly, the filming is beautiful. But on a level of TV ethics, it sticks with projects for years to see how they develop; there's none of the bullshit papering over the cracks of time you get with cheaply made or bargain hunting or poverty porn television. These days with TV it's really unusual to see how things develop over time – Grand Designs does this. Also, much TV from Come Dine With Me to The Apprentice manufactures conflict and set-pieces, and I don't think Grand Designs does that at all. The conversations are proper conversations. If there are personal conflicts, they explore them in another way. Kevin McCloud does actually get properly involved, quite literally mucking in on occasion. I think this kind of longterm engagement is increasingly rare in television, often with toxic consequences where people and places are fetishised, cheapened or misrepresented.
Obviously there's a central middle classness about the show in that it gives no sense how extraordinarily exceptional it is to be in a position to build your own house, or to take a year off from work, but it at least mentions debt, or environmental issues, etc, and treats the viewer as an adult to make up their own mind about it.
So yeah. Grand Designs.
Comment