You’d think, with Basil Fawlty so central to their culture, British people would not all think themselves capable of running bed-and-breakfasts. Yet the British versions of “House Hunters” (that I happen to be able to stream) inevitably include the quest for “holiday let potential.” No matter their prior hospitality experience or evident gregariousness, everyone looking for a new home in Lisbon or Lincolnshire or wherever (there is also “Escape to the Chateau,” same concept but fallen-aristocrat castles in France) imagines that their early-retirement home purchase will have “income potential.”
Why, Phoebe, have you watched this garbage, when you could be watching new-to-you eps of “One Foot in the Grave”? It’s got the soothing lack of surprises of anything in the “House Hunters” realm (including US and French varieties): everyone not only wants an open-plan kitchen, but believes it is a quirk of their own to want this. They all need a minimum of four bedrooms in their own quarters, although it’s never clear for what, as there are generally only two of them. They also require land — maybe they’re thinking of getting some chickens, or in one case, llamas. (There’s a specific amount of roaming land needed per llama, one learns, which changes forever how one views the llama area at one’s local Toronto zoo.) A paddock. One simply must have room to stable not just a pony (ala Hyacinth’s sister Violet as per the catchphrase) but horses, or why even escape to the country to begin with? (The pre-Brexit “Continent” version was better but is less fresh in my mind as I write this.)
The typical couple is straight, and somewhere between middle-aged and elderly, but a relatively new pair, and this will be their first home purchase together. They hold hands, a display of young love. They spell out that their children from previous relationships will not be living with them, but their pets will, and require space to roam. Occasionally it’ll be a younger couple with a baby (in which case several acres are needed for toddling), or a euphemistic same-sex friend helping a single person find their “escape.” (Are the house-hunters ever allowed to be openly gay? Only one example comes to mind, the man whose adult daughter had terrible food poisoning in Portugal and had to miss a day of the house-hunting.)
There are the charismatic (and in Alistair Appleton’s case, slyly humorous) hosts, as well as the cultural excursion segments involving cheese tastings or seal rescue or, memorably, a session of toilet-cleaning. (What had that house-hunter done to the show’s producers?) Every episode includes the same recitation of where average house prices stand with respect to the UK average, followed up with a caveat about how you can expect to pay more by the coast, and less in the industrial wasteland bit.
I guess it’s voyeurism, but the tamest possible kind. You can speculate on the finances of the episode’s contestants — how did these people come to have precisely 425,000 pounds? And why have they calculated it’s better to pay that than somewhat less, but without the need to run an upscale caravan grounds on their property? You can also wonder about their aesthetic requirements, like the man who full-on refused to live in a house with an en suite bathroom. And the subtext is how crucial home staging is — the houses that look like a Miss Marple episode (note: my personal interior design goal - if it’s floral and IKEA sells it, it’s at the very least in my virtual cart) are old fashioned and in need of an update.
Oh and nobody likes semidetached, sniff, which in fairness is a weird quality for houses in the middle of very rural areas to have. (I’m always reminded of Captain Peacock telling Miss Brahms that “there are no semi-detached manor houses” in “Are You Being Served? Again!,” the context of which I’m too tired to type out. Point is, Captain Peacock is surprisingly wrong about this.)
It is a bit bleak to watch all of these investments get made in 2015 or so, from the vantage point of 2020. Do not do this!! you want to shout into the television (the laptop), there will not be travel anymore! No one is coming to your “equestrian B&B”! (Or maybe they are? I have no idea.)
But more generally, and not pandemic-specific: do these people actually end up running businesses? How does it play out? The “Chateau” version appears to address this, and there was even something about people having I’m not even kidding a Gourmet Night of some sort at theirs, to raise money in the off-season, but there’s something about the editing or pacing on that one that makes it too garbage even for me.