In it for the long haul
Clarke Gayford clambers into the cab for a second season of his hit home-shift show.
MOVING HOUSES, TVNZ 1, Anzac Day, 7pm
The key to Moving Houses, which begins a second season this week, is that it’s about drama that was already there. People were putting old homes on the backs of trucks and taking them places for a long time before anyone pointed a camera at it. It’s never not a dramatic thing to do.
A good example is the new season’s opening episode, which sees a grand-looking house cut into several pieces and driven from Auckland to Ahipara, at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach. It’s a journey some of us might find a bit daunting just in a car.
The producers of factual TV series often contrive deadlines to generate tension but in this case, the deadlines are quite real – if the trucks miss their midnight moment through the Dome Valley, they’re off the road until the following night. And that’s not the only hazard.
“Yeah, exactly,” agrees host Clarke Gayford, who professes to being uncomfortable with what’s sometimes called the magic of television.
“This series has been really enjoyable, right from the start, because as you say, that stuff is real. The time constraint was real. And hitting a power line and sitting in the cab of that truck, seeing the flash of light and the truck driver saying, ‘whoa, whoa’, jamming the brakes on and then having to get the power board out, and sitting around for a few hours until all that happened … that was all very real.”
It has certainly struck a chord with the TV audience. The first season of Moving Houses finished 2021 behind only 1 News and Country Calendar among TVNZ’s top programmes. That, in turn, has moved more people to move houses. “I know for a fact there’s been far more interest because of our series,” says Gayford. “The house-moving companies have all fed back to us that they had a spike on their websites every Tuesday when the show went to air with people looking at the homes.”
In turn, the companies began contacting the producers with interesting projects.
The people who actually do the work seem not only competent but preternaturally unflappable. “I have nothing but admiration and respect for the range of their skill set,” says Gayford. “They go into a house and figure out all the problems. They get this massive big lump on the road and navigate things at a trucking level – and then there’s the fine-scale work at the other end where they bring it all back together. It’s incredible.”
Challenges remain. The show has been shot over two summers that have taken in extreme weather, building supply and labour shortages, and Covid restrictions.
It’s still not clear whether it will be possible to shoot the allimportant “reveal” for a couple of the moves. The show was originally supposed to wrap in November, says Gayford, but, “We will film right up until the get-go because we want these couples to have as much time as possible to get their projects finished.”
The Ahipara reveal was captured not long before the episode was scheduled to air, with the pictures being uploaded for editing direct from the site. But it was, Gayford says, a happy ending for owners Dean and Becky and their family.
“Their whole reason for moving up there was to have better family roots back into the area and to get to know the community. And as a result, the community really swung around them and they ended up with all these tradies who swung in to help. I ended up having a beer with them and they were really proud of the work. It’s phenomenal.”
So, knowing what he does, would Gayford be the client who gets in the cab of the truck and shadows every step of the move – or the one who stays home and drinks heavily while waiting for news?
“That’s a good question,” says Gayford. “Some of the couples get so excited that they don’t sleep anyway, because they know that the house is coming, so they come out and follow it.
“I think I would follow, just because I know the process so well. And you always think that if you’re there, they’ll be extra careful going around that narrow S-bend on the way to your driveway … ” ▮