My top three house porn TV shows
Hands up if you’ve ever played one of these house porn fantasy games:
Imagining yourself living in an amazing house that you pass on the street
Imagining yourself living in an amazing house you find trawling property websites
Imagining yourself living in an amazing house you spot on a social media site like Instagram
Imagining yourself living in an amazing house you see on a TV show
If you raised your hand to only one, I’m, frankly, rather disappointed. If you raised your hand to all of them, you’re my kind of person.
Other people’s homes
I have absolutely no data to base this assumption on, other than how much of a talking point the first of the programmes in my top three list has become, but as we’ve all spent far more time in our own homes, so, it seems to me, we have become correspondingly more fascinated by the homes that other people live in. Especially as we’re seeing so much more of them in the background of zoom calls (how many of those books have they actually read? How cool/beautiful/weird - delete as appropriate - are those pictures on their wall. That all looks suspiciously neat, I wonder if the rest of the room/house is as chaotic as mine.)
Celebrities houses
And you can dial up the fascination by a factor of 100 when the homes concerned either belong to celebrities (boo to those spoilsports who’ve done their at-home interviews in front of a plain wall or curtains. Don’t you understand our desperate desire to oggle your fabulously unattainable lifestyles?) or come with multi million pound/dollar price tags (oh for that lottery win).
These prompt a whole new version of the property porn fantasy game. The one where your fantasy bank account has enough fantasy dosh sloshing around in it to buy one of these absurdly expensive abodes, meaning that your only decision is exactly what kind of absurdly expensive fantasy home you want.
What’s your fantasy?
How about an ultra-modern, open-plan, edifice built of glass and steel? Or maybe you prefer a magnificently restored period mansion in acres of grounds. Is a vast, sprawling urban penthouse more to your taste? Or a shabby chic beach-side estate with sweeping sea views.
It’s that fascination - oh, alright, I admit, obsession - with wow-factor houses that led me to inhale the first of my top three house porn TV shows, not quite in one sitting - I mean, there are three, eight episode, series - but in an indecently short space of goggle-eyed, slack-jawed time.
House porn TV show 1 - Selling Sunset
This Netflix show, following the team at the Oppenheim Group real estate brokerage (that’s estate agency to you and me) in Los Angeles, lodged itself at the top of the channel’s hit list for good reason
First off, obviously, there are the houses.
Talk about a pool with a view
Each multi (multi, multi)-million dollar one more fabulously, head-shakingly, tastelessly over-the-top than the last.. The rooms! The decor! The pools! (they ALL have pools) The views! The levels of luxury are off the scale. (Though if could someone explain to me why so many of them have more bathrooms than bedrooms I’d be most grateful).
What a team!
Then, as if the houses weren’t enough, there are the glamazon team of women selling them. These towering - greatly helped by the stripper-style heels they are inexplicably able to stride around in - house porn peddlers are as fearsome in their determination to get their deals across the line (in the US the brokers/agents work on commission only) as they are in their ability to gossip about and cat-fight with each other.
Of course, no reality show is complete without its villain, and Christine, the most towering, most glamorous, most……er, directly spoken of the group, fills the role with relish.
Christine in full outspoken flow. Check out the nails just edging into the right of the shot.
From her endlessly varied styled, waist-length platinum blonde hair (my stand-out favourite was the one with the metal chains woven into it), to her eye-popping outfits, to her, surely foot high, spindle heeled shoes, she looks every bit like a living Barbie, albeit one with a scathingly shape tongue and views she’s shamelessly unafraid to voice.
All in all, it all makes for utterly compelling watching. I’m sold. And I bet you will be too.
House porn TV show 2 - Million Dollar Beach House
Given the aforementioned fantasy bank account awash with fantasy cash, my dont-even-have-to-think-about-it-for-a-second choice of fantasy home would be the beach-front one. Living not just by, but on, the sea has always been my dream (I would say the closest I’m likely to get is a beach hut, but have you seen what beach huts cost?)
So when Netflix decided to capitalise on the success of Selling Sunset with a version set in the ultra-exclusive, ocean-front enclave of The Hamptons, I was parked in front of my TV from the off.
To be honest, the agents - all but one of them men - aren’t nearly as watch-worthy a bunch as the Selling Sunset team, and the tensions between them often feel more manufactured than ‘real’.
Less people more property
But what you get in return is a lot more property-porn-per-episode, as the camera lingers longer (longingly?) on the absurdly luxurious, largely sea-front or facing houses.
Water, water everywhere
In a world where frequently questionable taste and unimaginably deep pockets rule, these are homes with no-holds barred levels of luxury, and with the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop. What more could you want?
Million Dollar Beach Hut, Netflix
The programme that makes it to the third slot of my top three couldn’t be more different from the first two
House porn TV show 3 - Grand Designs
It’s testament to just how compelling - and emotionally captivating - it is watching people go through the inevitable struggles, heartaches and triumphs of building their own homes, that Grand Designs has been on our TV screens for over 20 years.
As predictable as it is that the home builders will encounter, and struggle to overcome, any number of challenges and hurdles on their home-building journey, is the inevitable moment in every programme when presenter Kevin McCloud will - with perfect Eyore gloom - declare that the project is doomed to be a disaster.
Not always, but sometimes
Of course nine times out of 10 (there’s always a tantalising possibility of his prediction coming true) it’s the complete opposite, and the visionary, sometimes more than a little bonkers, homes that the programme’s subjects literally create for themselves, are a heart-lifting triumph.
Some of the Grand Design projects are a bit more bonkers than others…..
The shipping container house that Kevin professed was his favourite ever Grand Designs project
Unlike the houses featured in Selling Sunset and Million Dollar Beach Hut, these are homes you (mostly) could actually picture building and living in yourself, and you feel just as much delight -and relief - in the finished projects as the men and women whose determination and persistence have made them a reality.
