Recently it’s been more isolation, isolation, isolation than Location, Location, Location. Our holidays went out the window, and in came hours sat (trapped) in our homes. And all this time à la maison has got people ever so slightly twitchy.
There have been news articles about Londoners fleeing and fed up of flats, and prospective homeowners crying to their mortgage advisors as house prices grew to a five-year high. So, it sounds like we’re in a pickle, and there’s only one thing for it: property programmes, specifically, Location, Location, Location. We admit, it’s not got the project pieces of Grand Designs, and is a few counties away from the aesthetic abodes of Apple TV+’s Away. But what it lacks for in style, it makes up for in cosiness. Half the fun of the Channel 4 classicis watching these people – often with all the charisma of a wooden spoon – wander about these various locations, locations, locations, exhibiting a surprising lack of knowledge.
You want four-bedroom, Victorian townhouse in the home counties for under two hundred grand? Not on your nelly. Kirstie and Phil are cracking company, with their work-wife flanter and more puns than you can shake a timber beam at. The show has been round the perfectly located block more than a few times, having first aired back in 2000 when shabby chic was all the rage, and the words ‘right move’ were a verb, not a brand. Yet somehow, we keep coming back for more. 33 seasons more, in fact.
You might want to start with the earlier seasons, according to Gavin Newsham in The Guardian, who says the more recent seasons have “lost the plot.” He says: “Channel 4 got greedy. First they doubled show’s length from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. Then came a spillage, a slick even, of spin-offs.” However, in an interview marking two decades of the show being on air, The Times’ Hugh Graham says: “Twenty years and 237 episodes later, Location, Location, Location is one of the longest-running primetime shows,” making “Phil and Kirstie, their light-hearted banter and bickering part of our lives.”
First shown May 2000.
