Home Sweet Home

Season 1 1Magic (*103) 12:00 & 16:00 Reality

The saying “walk a mile in someone’s shoes” means understanding a person’s perspective and thought process before judging them. That’s exactly what reality show Home Sweet Home sets out to do. In the social experiment, two families, with vastly contrasting lifestyles and backgrounds exchange homes for four days and explore their similarities and differences. “The key design of Home Sweet Home isn’t based on conflict, but curiosity. By trading homes, the families realise that they are more alike than they realise,” explains executive producer Ava Duvernay, who also created drama series Queen Sugar.

On the day of the move, both families receive an instruction manual that includes information about how the family of each household is run, what they eat and their daily routines. That isn’t all, as both families also get acquainted with each other’s friends and families. And at the end of the experiment, both families meet and debrief in a roundtable.

In the first episode, the Vasilious are devout Greet Orthodox immigrants, consisting of a mom and a dad – and they’re more on the strict side – as opposed to the Wixx family, who’re an African-American same-sex couple, and they encourage their kids to have fun. The show’s premise isn’t new. It’s the same mould as reality show Wife Swap, where two moms with different parenting styles switch homes for a week. But rather than pin the families against each other based on differences, Home Sweet Home unites them. “We couldn’t have any bratty teens or grouchy dads – tropes you always see. Instead, there are two groups in each episode who are interested in having a social exploration,” reveals Ava.