Thursday, July 5, 2012

Blocked

Last night I watched TV3's premiere of The Block NZ. It's a DIY home renovation reality show based on an Australian model in which four couples compete to do up dilapidated houses (or as TV3's website had it, "depilated homes"*, which makes it sound more like The GC). The first episode appeared to consist of a half-hour commercial for Bunnings. 


 These are the four houses the contestants will live in, and renovate, over three months. Clearly the art department has been hard at work with their crowbars.




With tarps on the roofs, holes in the walls, iron boarding up windows and piles of bricks and rubbish in the yards, The Block's derelict doer-uppers look like half of Christchurch, nearly eighteen months after the  earthquake, where fixing houses is rather more critical than entertaining. 


Not wanting to be too mealy-mouthed about it: but at the very least, it seems like a wasted opportunity, doesn't it.




*Disappointingly, I see they've now fixed the typo.

2 comments:

Special K said...

Hear hear!

styler said...

possibly what is worse is that half those houses are obviously fake demolished, so they turned them into demo sites. It's a little strange and i doubt it's like the australian version where all the neighbors say houw nice it is to see parts of the neighborhood revitalised