ENTERTAINMENT
HELP! WE BOUGHT A VILLAGE Channel 4, 4pm
This series is a winning combination of property programme and travel show, charting stories of Britons who moved abroad to try to rescue villages and hamlets in France, Spain and Italy, long abandoned by locals who have left the land and moved to cities in search of work – or, the narration puts it: “plucky Brits taking on the challenge of a lifetime.”
Today we meet people behind projects in France and Italy. In La Busliére in
Normandy, two landscape gardeners, Paul and Yip (both from Kent, originally), purchased a ruin to create a holiday home, but now find themselves, building by building, bringing life back to the abandoned hamlet in which it sits. We also stop off at Morei in Piedmont, where Yorkshire couple Francesca and Carl have renovated a house that they originally planned to eventually retire to. “It’s not worked out like that,” he says drily. Instead, since 2007, they have been slowly but surely purchasing the surrounding houses to create a set of delightful holiday homes for rent.
As well as renovations, the programme shows the red tape involved – one rescuer had to get in touch with the 99 original owners of each building in the village that he saved – and teaches us that bringing life back to a locality means creating a thriving business for it to survive.