■ Room to Improve | RTE1, Sun
TOTTERING pillars; cracked edifices; fractured foundations; a house divided against itself — Room to Improve wasn’t the smartest place to go in search of refuge from TV’s post-election coverage. The language used by posturing party leaders last week was indistinguishable from the argot of RTE’s flagship home-improvement show. On both fronts, however, we’ve reached a watershed moment where it’s no longer possible to deny the urgent need for structural reform.
There has long been something of the paternalistic politician about Dermot Bannon, the charismatic architect around whom Room to Improve is built. Though ostensibly a servant of the people who engage his services, Bannon is actually a bossy-boots who believes he knows best. Most episodes revel in the tension created by his efforts to impose his worldview on his clients, under the guise of giving them what they want. After all these years, of course, there’s precious little tension left.
Staying within budget isn’t Bannon’s strong suit. He routinely displays a disregard for arithmetic worthy of Fine Gael’s finance spokesmen. Yet while politicians cook the books to make themselves look good, Bannon bends the spend in pursuit of a loftier goal. Bricks and mortar are the totems of his profession but he’s primarily in the business of hopes and dreams.
His signature design is a big room with large windows. “Letting in the light” is his avowed mission and there is a quasi-messianic quality to the passion with which he advocates a brighter outlook — both psychologically and in terms of decor. Bannon builds metaphors as avidly as he builds extensions. If the series can be believed, even the most brightness-averse clients eventually come around to his way of seeing.
The significant problem now facing Room to Improve is the classic real-estate challenge: location, location, location. RTE’s determination to make the show the centrepiece of its Sunday schedule has placed inordinate weight on a comparatively flimsy format. The restoration dramas can still be mildly engaging. The casting is sometimes imaginative. However, the nuts and bolts of this programme are simply not gripping enough to justify 60 minutes of screen-time on TV’s most competitive night.
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Last week’s edition was one of the better shows in a lacklustre ninth series, yet it also exemplified the format’s problems. The focus was a 19th-century coach house near Maynooth, which George and Sinead had purchased for €355,000. According to Bannon, however, the couple made the purchase with “their hearts not their heads”, a mishap which would necessitate the spending of a lot more than their €180,000 makeover budget.
Bannon said the house had great “kerb appeal”. From outside, it looked “idyllic”, but on closer inspection the idyll was a mirage. Stepping inside was like falling down the rabbit hole. Its interior was a disorienting maze of low ceilings, steep stairs and dipping floors, narrow corridors linking disconcertingly enormous rooms. There was a shower in the hallway. “None of the rooms really works,” said Bannon.
The house passed its pre-sale surveyor tests but, when the renovations began, hidden secrets were exposed. Inadequate insulation had cultivated a subtropical ecosystem between the dry-lining and the stone walls. A subsequent engineers’ report revealed the entire building was infested by a parasitic fungus — or, as the reliably alarmist Bannon preferred, “a monster”.
Getting rid of the fungus required the gutting of the house and, consequently, the budget. The roof had to be removed — an unexpected boost for Bannon’s let-there-be-light philosophy. Unfortunately, the roof was then replaced. Further problems emerged, as they always do, and Bannon became exasperated. Mounting panic among all concerned was conveyed, as usual, via frantic editing and horror-movie music. But just when it seemed that the obstacles were insurmountable, we were presented with the completed house. Despite its extended running time, the show rattles through the latter stages of each project with unseemly haste. When the builder rather than the architect takes centre-stage, the curtain starts to drop.
The climax of most makeover shows is the “reveal” — the tarantara! moment at which the homeowners cry out in either delight or despair when they see how their pad has been padded out. Room to Improve eschews such theatrics, but also eschews a satisfying conclusion. Every episode ends on the same implausibly sweet note, with a house-warming party and a heart-warming reunion. Clients and builders clink glasses. Everybody raises a toast to Bannon. For a programme supposedly celebrating individual style, it’s a strange exhibition of lazy uniformity.
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Room to Improve is an increasingly popular subject for memes, cartoons and viral parodies. Even the most loyal devotees have taken to laughing at the predictability of the show’s rituals and Bannon’s pronouncements. Nevertheless, CoCo Television is already inviting participants for yet another series. With home-improvements and democratic revolutions, it seems, some mistakes were built to last.