Grand Designs: House of the Year 2021
CHANNEL 4, 9PM
“Step into a magic world of clutter-free surfaces and ever-clean bathrooms,” coos Kevin Mccloud at the start of this special series in the long-running design programme. His invitation is spot on: two years mostly cooped in our houses has led to a mania to tear up the same old walls and start anew. The properties featured here, though, less resemble liveable homes and more cautionary tales as to what happens when ambition, too much money and an obsession with, well,
Grand Designs collide.
This week, Mccloud and his co-presenters, Damion Burrows and Michelle Ogundehin, explore five homes on a longlist of 20 for RIBA’S 2021 House of the Year. Tonight’s theme is “houses which surprise” and they include a
Thunderbirds-inspired converted water tower in Norfolk, an ingenious “house-within-a-house” in south London, and a Modernist fantasia squirrelled inside a Grade Ii-listed castle. All are spectacular; none look affordable. Mccloud is as charismatic as ever. But
his co-presenters’ insights are mostly reduced to “wow”. Still, it’s a diverting escape from
staring at that patch of mould you’ve been meaning to tackle.