What to watch
Grand Designs: House of the Year
CHANNEL 4, 9.00PM
It’s that time of year again when Kevin Mccloud teams up with the Royal Institute of British Architects to have a nose around the most enviable homes built in the past 12 months. As ever, Mccloud brings his particular wit to the proceedings, and starts by dividing this year’s longlisted houses into four categories: houses with a past, houses made from interesting materials, extreme houses and – in this opener – houses that dare to be different.
It’s a broad category, to be fair, and the five homes featured have made their daring moves in strikingly diverse ways: there’s a “grey monolithic slab that rejects conformity” in Hackney, London; a sleek modernist masterpiece that had its riverside neighbours fuming (and sending the project to the High Court to chase planning permission) in Henley-on-thames; a warmly woody Victorian conversion in north London; a semi-attached shared house built into a Newcastle hillside; and an end of terrace “marvel of layout in a bright red onesie” in (again) London. The only thing that really connects them is the fact that they’re all uniquely fabulous – and most of us would give our eye teeth to live in any one of them. Gerard O’donovan