Home shows: surely the bubbly's got to burst

By FRANCES GRANT

Never has the champagne flowed so freely in primetime television. The ratings boom for real estate telly shows no sign of abating.

"See you next year," promised Robert Harte, host of My House, My Castle, in this week's season finale of TV2's hit home-ownership show.

Optimism worthy of any dedicated real estate agent - and with good reason. Property has been the hot genre in local telly production this year.

Everywhere you looked on the channels, it seemed, another presenter, real estate agent or happy new home-owner was cracking open the wine or the bubbly.

TV One's Location, Location, Location was the first to realise the topic's ratings and star-making potential.

Real estate agents have a distinctive style of song and dance but they weren't the most obvious pool of talent. This show, however, came up with its very own million-dollar man: Michael Boulgaris in his bright yellow jacket.

My House, My Castle exploited the formula's crossover potential. Consumer rights and disputes - lawyer Harte's forte in this area needed a home after the disastrous You Be The Judge - were added to the mix.

The makeover element brought another new face, the exponent of secret tricks for flogging a hard-to-sell house, David "I'll just pop this stale loaf of bread in the oven" McNie. Talk about timely: just a few weeks into the series, guess which telly presenter's house was on the market with the sales line, "My Home, My Castle."

The talent crossed over, too. Incurable romantics Ian and Lesley had the decorating flair to earn them double telly exposure, turning up to show off their latest ways with rouching and flounces after they were discovered in a stablemate show, the docusoap Weddings.

And like all good religions, telly's property worship has its resurrection. Home Front, a showcase for the homes of the affluent and creative, is the old Open Home in all but name and its blatant for-sale segment.

The property boom threw up a bizarre mutant, too, in the makeover-cum-gameshow Dream Home, an engineered televised demonstration, it appeared, of that sponsor bank's advertising slogan, "Luck has nothing to do with it."

Hard work, we were constantly reminded throughout, was its own reward. But this is telly and the need for a happy ending confused the message. "If you work hard you make your own luck," the losing party were told, as the bank gave them a handout of $10,000 to ensure they could buy the home they'd laboured to transform.

Meanwhile, the winds of change have roared through the premier House of the nation. The blue team may have won Dream Home but Parliament is now decidedly decked out in shades of red and green.

The bottom doesn't look like falling out of the market for telly real estate shows just yet. But surely the people's choice will have a flow-on effect.

There's a docusoap or consumer rights show to be made in the promised building boom and demise of market rentals for state housing.

The audience looks ripe for a spin-off show from Home Front, dedicated solely to showcasing eco-friendly homes on the Coromandel. Makeovers could soon feature a more stimulating variety of pot-plant.

And with "chardonnay" or "champagne socialism" now dirty words, we can at least expect a new choice of toast in an era of the "true" Left. I'm looking forward to seeing the real estate agents treating their clients to organic feijoa fizz.