Kiwis’ love affair with The Block
It’s become staple reality TV. So what is it about the DIY show that keeps viewers coming back for more, asks Dani McDonald.
There were few smiles. No hoots of victory from the stage. The Block 2017 had crowned its solemn-faced winners, while their fellow contestants held back tears. The show’s host, Mark Richardson, looked anxious as he stuck to the script prepared for a very different ending.
It was an unforgettable episode.
Fans will remember the outrage when Andy Murdie and Nate Ross’ house was thrown back into the auction, ripping the win away from Palmerston North friends Stacey Cottrill and Yanita McLea with their eventual, second-time-around $31,000 profit.
‘‘It was pretty heartbreaking seeing all the other contestants crying,’’ Murdie recalls.‘‘You put so much heart and soul and effort into it for four months and you walk away with nothing. It wasn’t the ending that everyone was hoping for.’’
TV critics questioned whether the show would air the following year after the total profit earned from the four Block houses dropped from $981,000 to just $65,000.
As Richardson points out, the success of the show doesn’t just hinge on the sale price.
‘‘You know what’s great about it? It’s created jeopardy for this season. And every TV producer knows that jeopardy is gold,’’ Richardson says.
‘‘So now we have this situation where the audience and the contestants understand that there isn’t a pot of the gold at the end of every rainbow.
‘‘This is a competition and I think last year there was a sense of entitlement by everyone concerned – the audience, the media, the presenters, the contestants – that everyone was going to make money. But that’s not the case and I think we’ve now got an element of realism which is genuine jeopardy.’’
For the past six years, The Block NZ has put four couples against each other as they battle out challenges to win enough money to make their property the most attractive for the biggest investment on auction night. The winning couple takes home a $100,000 cash prize and every contestant takes home any profit made on the sale.
The format was taken from the Australian series, already in its ninth season, when Warner Bros producers put a call out for Kiwis to enter their very own DIY show.
Southland brother and sister Libby and Ben Crawford took out the title in 2012. They entered after watching a few seasons of the Australian show. ‘‘I think it was pretty positive being the first season, ‘‘ Libby says. ‘‘It naturally held people’s interest because it was new and fresh and, for us, there was no preconceived ideas based on previous seasons.
‘‘We didn’t go into it with too many expectations. It was just a pretty random thing that we said yes to and it turned out pretty well.’’
For three seasons New Zealand followed the same format as Australia. Then production added game-changers to inject a bit of fun into the show, series producer Aaron Dolbel says.
‘‘We tried to deviate a wee bit [from the Australian version] and show more of [the contestants’] personalities as opposed to all the decisions they make about what kind of curtains they want and what kind of furniture they have,’’ he says.
‘‘We sort of cut loose a wee bit and let them have more fun. That’s not to say the Australians don’t have fun in their episodes but we have a few more games than they do. It’s kind of a beast that’s evolved and every year different things happen.’’
One of those memorable challenges in 2017 included a contemporary ballet dance from favourites Murdie and Ross. Dressed in tutus, the pair portrayed the trials and tribulations of two sandflies making their way from Hamilton to Auckland using ribbons, juggling balls and very compelling gymnastics.
It wasn’t a reflection of their experience with a hammer, nor was it a renovating challenge. But it did make entertaining television.
Then there was the need to loosen up on the strict rules. ‘‘The more rules you try to put on people, the less creative they become, so you sort of let them go off on a tangent and you try to rein them in,’’ says Dolbel. ‘‘If you let them have a bit more creative freedom then lots more interesting things happen.’’
While its Australian counterpart upped its contestant numbers to five couples over the past four seasons, The Block NZ has stayed steady at four. Co-creator and The Block Australia’s executive producer Julian Cress has watched the show progress from its very beginning and says the key to its success comes down to the variables – people and places.
‘‘Trying to compare different series of The Block to other shows like MasterChef or The Voice, you come back [season after season] and the show tends to look the same each time.
‘‘Because The Block moves location each year , as well as having different contestants, it’s always a very different experience for the viewer. It never feels old,’’ he says.
Dolbel trawls through thousands of video entries searching for the right contestants. And he can usually tell within the first few seconds of watching whether they have what it takes.
He’s looking for personality, skills and whether they’ll be great for television.
‘‘I feel sometimes like I’m a judge on the X-Factor. You can just tell by the personality. I have a vibe about whether I think they’re good and then obviously if they have renovating and design skills, that’s a big plus.
‘‘If they’re hilariously funny or if I think they have great entertainment value as well as some kind of design then those are the things that can get them on to the shortlist,’’ he says.
But, none of that matters if audiences aren’t tuning into their televisions four nights a week to watch the contestants watching paint dry.
One of the best days for Dolbel is seeing hundreds of people lining up, not only to take a glimpse at the properties that have developed over the 12 weeks on TV, but also to see the normal,
‘‘Last year there was a sense of entitlement by everyone concerned that everyone was going to make money.’’ Mark Richardson
everyday New Zealand DIY battlers in the flesh and blood.
‘‘That’s why the characters are the most important part of the show,’’ he says. ‘‘People just relate to them. They want to see them succeed and they want to see what they do next. They want to see what funny pranks they do, how they bounce back from getting a bad score at judging.’’
For Richardson, the show also reflects the Kiwi dream of home ownership and the do-it-yourself attitude.
‘‘It’s just what we do. It is in our psyche, it’s in our blood. They used to say that the key to TV is having extraordinary people doing big things or ordinary people doing extraordinary things – but this is neither.
‘‘This is normal people doing a normal thing and we get in behind it because we identify with it,’’ he says.
‘‘You only have to look at the angst around firsthome buyers and the property crisis to see how important home ownership is for New Zealanders, and a lot of New Zealanders who get into their first homes are often do-ups.’’
So could there be a chance that The Block NZ expands out of Auckland at some point? After all, the show’s Aussie counterpart made the change from Sydney to Melbourne.
‘‘The housing market outside of Auckland doesn’t have as much scope at the moment to get the return for the teams we’d hope that they would achieve,’’ Dolbel says.
‘‘But never say never.’’