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Must Watch reviews Buying London

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan join 5 Live presenter Nihal Arthanayake to review ‘Buying London’.

‘Buying London’ is essentially a British version of the Netflix reality show ‘Selling Sunset’.

The show received a zero star review from the Guardian!

Netflix

Nihal: “Is ‘Buying London’ a Must Watch?”

Scott: “It isn’t a Must Watch. There are guilty pleasure TV shows out there, such as ‘Selling Sunset’.

“And now they’ve made a British version where you see an elite, luxury property agency dealing with the rich and famous.

"It mostly consists of people undermining each other, sitting in front of computers that don’t ever go past Google, followed by tours of houses that are very expensive, but also rather bland and ugly."

Netflix

Scott: “It’s just copied and pasted the formula. But, there are some things in this show which rub up people the wrong way, including me.

“From the off, they make it appear all that London is just Mayfair, Kensington, Chelsea and Belgravia. The ‘Made in Chelsea’ universe.

“A lot of the show consists of houses going on the market, posh people wearing sunglasses arguing about who is going to be selling the property, and houses that don’t really look like they’ve ever been lived in.”

Netflix

Scott: “The reason why it frustrates me is how it reinforces and celebrates ostentatious wealth and property ownership at a time when the cost of rentals for millions has increased.

“I get that TV is escapism but there is literally a moment in this first episode where we see a fifteen bedroom house in Mayfair that is suspected to be worth more than £300 million, there’s gold leaf practically everywhere, it's got London’s biggest biggest ballroom, its 45,000 square feet and then you hear a conversation between two people and they say, “it’s so big this house, God help you with your gas bill”.

Netflix

Scott: “I get that this type of TV is there to cause a little bit of frustration, if anything that’s part of the appeal.

“But there was something that just made me feel so uncomfortable with just the way that it celebrates this life of elite property ownership whilst being so far removed from the realities of where many people live.

“The other rant I have about this is just how lazy this show is. ‘Selling Sunset’ is very good at what it does, it’s cast brilliantly. It is an art form, American reality. But I think they've just gone “we can do it with a British equivalent” without having an interesting mix of people involved.”

Netflix

Nihal: “Just to give you the headline from The Guardian – in their ‘Buying London’ review - they call it ‘Probably the Most Hateable TV Show Ever Made’. Now if you put a headline like that, people are going to watch it.”

Hayley: “No, it is not a Must Watch. I looked at my notes this morning and all I had written was ‘dreadful people, uninteresting jobs, horrible houses’.

“I wish we got the kind of London landlord that tries to rent out the absolute monstrosities - more in line with what most of us have to deal with when we go looking for somewhere to rent. Like a real-life ‘Stath Lets Flats’. I would watch that. That would be funny and depressing.”

Hayley: “I remember viewing one flat where the real estate agent pulled a chef's knife off the top of the electricity box and said “don’t worry, you’ll get used to jimmying the door open with this”.

“That stuff could be interesting! This is just boring. It’s not even the kind of thing you can watch as a hate-watch because it’s so boring.

“And it proves to me that the very rich, or at least the ones in this show, have no taste. So you don’t even get to lust after nice houses that you can’t afford, you just have to look at how other people spend money.

“Like Scott said, this show is just a knackered old cliche. Also, even though it’s set in England, I don’t feel like it is made for us. It feels like a London explainer for Americans.”

All seven episodes of ‘Buying London’ are available on Netflix now.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening on Ö÷²¥´óÐã Sounds and all other podcast providers.

This week the team also reviewed ‘Bay of Fires’ and ‘Into the Amazon with Robson Green’.

Click here to listen to the latest episode.

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