By TANIA PHILLIPS
Beeny’s Restoration Nightmare
ABC1, Wednesday, 22 January, 9.20pm
THERE is something rather calming and reassuring about watching Sarah Beeny’s Restoration Nightmare – particularly if you’re struggling to renovate your own home.
Beeny, who became a property developer at the age of 24 and has fronted numerous British television shows from Property Ladder to Help! My House Is Falling Down, has built a reputation on being no-nonsense and thinking with her head not her heart when it comes to restoring properties.
She seems to be everything most of us aren’t in the home renovation game, she has all the sensible solutions and everything seems to go her way. Until, it seems, it comes to her own home!
Mind you, the home we’re talking about isn’t a little ’50s bungalow in need of a bit of paint and maybe a wall taking out!
No, it seems Sarah Beeny and husband, artist Graham Swift, don’t do anything by half measures (they have four kids as well and a lot of the work was put in while she was pregnant with the youngest two).
The little fixer-upper these two take on is a stunning listed Georgian stately home which hasn’t been occupied for quite some time.
It is a massive undertaking as the couple try to not only restore the 97-room Rise Hall (you know it’s big when they call it a Hall) but also prepare it to pay it’s own way as a wedding venue.
The Hall has every type of rot known to man (actually I didn’t know there were different types of rot until this show) and, of course, she has a small (for the project) budget and a tight (probably unrealistic) timetable.
And, of course, like us all, she has a council to keep happy – only for Beeny her high profile does more harm then good when it comes to negotiating.
Added to the fun is a narration by actor Stephen Tompkinson (Ballykissangel) – and in later series (there are three in all) Downton Abbey’s own Mr Carson (Jim Carter) takes over.
This is car-crash television – everything that can go wrong does – but then that’s all part of the fun isn’t it?
Particularly when you realise that even the experts don’t have it all their own way.
