TV’s next big thing? Estate agents…
Ido not really watch reality TV, except for coin. I struggled through multiple seasons of Love Island – now thankfully dormant, due to Covid-19 – and thought the civilised world was over. Even so, I am obsessed with Netflix’s Selling Sunset, a scripted reality show about estatze agents based in the Hollywood Hills. I stayed up until 3am one night this week, gorging on series 2.
I am trying to analyse my obsession with Selling Sunset: why do I care about estate agents based in the Hollywood Hills? The easy answer is that I have always wanted to be an estate agent. They are journalists without deadlines. You can learn almost anything about people from their homes and when people buy them, they are curiously vulnerable and interesting.
I would probably watch a scripted reality TV show about estate agents based in Reading, or Tooting. But the combination of estate agency and Hollywood is fascinating. The estate agents drive supercars, fly in private jets – at least the villainous estate agent does – and wear designer clothes. They are all young, and insanely beautiful.
They look like movie stars – those creatures native to Hollywood – but they are more interesting than movie stars because they are allowed to be themselves as they wander around blank and gilded houses, which seem like mere boxes for luxury goods. They are hungry for status; anti-intellectual; and fallible. Selling Sunset is Hollywood, which is so mysterious, at its most real, and that is something wonderful.