OK – as pop culture goes, it’s a pretty high end addiction. I like to watch Location Location Location on BBC America. Set the DVR to tape it, freak out just a little when it’s a repeat (happens more and more often – though tonight I had a great one from Glasgow to watch…)
Home for Thanksgiving, discovered mom to be a huge fan of the American version of the show, HGTV’s House Hunters.
I’ve seen mom’s show before, and found it just as unbearable watching it with her (while my wife and dad couch snoozed in the other room in from of some sort of Seinfeld retrospective…) as I had in the past.
Of course, it’s in large part my NYC urban snobbery. Can’t bear the friggin McMansions, faceless, hideous. Whereas Location, Location, Location generally features hip apartments (like) and crumbling country houses (like not so much).
But it’s more than that – the gaping difference between the shows is that the British version tells you the prices of the apartments / what the lookers are wanting to spend, whereas the American version leaves out that crucial bit of information. (Often, Househunters even leaves out the city, ahem, sprawling suburban wasteland where we’re looking…)
Since I’m firm in the believe that television always brings us exactly what we want (OK – that "we" is a little bit troublesome, but bear with me), what does it say about the trans-atlantic gap that "we" will tolerate a house-buying show with no prices.
Or is it more awful? The wild disparity between red state and blue state home prices would alternately gross out half the viewership or make the other half keel over in bedazzled laughter… Is that the problem? The Oklahoma housewife seeing the $900,000 1 bedroom in Chelsea and/or the Brooklyn bourgeois bohemian viewing the $75,000 3 bedroom ranch in Missouri?
Something to think about anyway…
