This TV review first appeared in the Andersonstown News
HOME RESCUE (RTÉ ONE) is fond of rhetorical questions:
“Have you fallen out of love with your home? Do you struggle to find space, stranded in a sea of clutter? Well, take heart. Home Rescue with architect Róisín Murphy and builder Peter Finn are here.”
Róisín and Peter have five days to rescue Anne Shannon, who for some reason Is known as Sis.
“I’m a clutter-freak, yeah. Sunglasses, shoes – I hate getting rid of anything.”
When she’s not making clutter, Sis is making wreaths, which adds to the clutter. “She collects not just for crafts. If somebody has a good iron they don’t need, she keeps it, in case somebody else wants it” her sister explains.
Róisín aims to give Sis a “beautiful serene bedroom…a minimalist approach.”
What follows is lots of holes in walls, doors installed, wardrobes converted into kitchen presses. Róisín is big on panelling too: “That wall is going to have a life of its own.” And the bedroom? It will go from “cramped and bleak to boudoir chic”.
“Oh my God!” says Sis when she sees the Home Rescue job completed. “The wardrobe! Look at the colours!” High fives all round. “Fan-tastic!” Sis says for the 59th time.
And how does Sis like her new bedroom? “Oh my God – a very romantic room! I feel sexy in this room!”
Sis’s mum has come along to have a nosey and she’s so happy for her daughter she starts to cry. “Róisín has brought a happy home to us again!”
Sis gives Róisín a circular wreath and Róisín says she must leave now before she starts crying: “It’s other people’s job to cry”
Home improvement shows are very popular – why? Because getting your house redone in modern style would cost you a mint, but for a TV programme it’s peanuts. And the programme format has inbuilt tension: planning, pulling out and putting in, pretend disputes between architect and builder. With the predictable finale where the home-owner falls down in a swoon of delight.
On the law of averages, there must be some times when the sterile modern lines of kitchen and bedroom make home-owners want to throw up. But they can’t utter a word of dissent, much less get sick. Maybe they sign a kind of pre-nup: if we don’t express total and tear-inducing delight (cue sobbing Mum), we will pay in full for all the doing-up of our house.
But Sis loves everything and implies that not just paint but upward mobility has become possible: “Posh – we’re going to be posh now!”.
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