I think more than any programme on television, Grand Designs gets the closest to demonstrating the core pathology of the British psyche. You know Grand Designs (11 September, 9pm, Channel 4), which turns 25 at the start of the new series and celebrates with a compilation show that surely constitutes the easiest working day of Kevin McCloud’s life: a couple, often pregnant but sometimes not, have decided they want to build a house. Sometimes they already have a house, but knock that down. Sometimes they just have a plot of land that is essentially unreachable by any earthly vehicle.
Kevin McCloud is there, in a well-knotted linen scarf and a zipped-open puffer jacket, staring at the patch of grey-white sky above them. “It’s going to be big, then,” he says, and the man in the couple will laugh. “Yeah,” he’ll say. They look at each other. They’re excited. Their forever home. A monument in the image of their love. All they need to do is set their marriage on fire, pour petrol on that fire, spend £700,000 more than they can afford, miraculously somehow afford it anyway, and go 18 months over schedule. This is the hell they will endure to live in a slightly nicer house than you.
I love Grand Designs, of course, every stage of it. I love watching middle-class couples’ enthusiasm wither into misery as they live among dust, sand, shale and builders. I love watching them hold their foreheads while a window gets lowered in with a crane, I love watching them quietly stop appearing together on screen. I love watching Kevin McCloud doing basically anything – I love watching him explain engineering concepts with biscuits, something he frequently does for reasons that still, after a quarter of a century, are unclear – but I especially love his acidic cynicism, a shot of bitter reality beneath every lofty dream.
“And how will that stand up?” he says, when a man who went to the school that invented rugby shows him a biro sketch of some great eco-mansion he’s planning. “Who’s going to reinforce the foundation? Is that steel even strong enough? I’m not sure you’ve tested the arch.” Their smiles drop. A few months later, on the most miserable day of the year, Kevin visits them again. Water drips through a dozen different holes. He was right all along, wasn’t he? “Yes,” they admit. How much did it cost to fix? They look away. The wife is no longer there when the camera crews come over. Twilight footage of him building a wall, inelegant and alone.
And then, of course, the delicious prestige: after the third ad break, on a glorious summer’s day, everyone is reunited to marvel at the house. The garden is planted in, some unambitious decor has been added. They show off the clever thing they did with the kitchen and that solar panel they put on the roof. There’s moss, there’s slate, there’s the biggest window you’ve ever seen in your puny little life. “Wow,” Kevin says, sounding unwowed. More than anything he is wowed at the fact that they actually did it. “Was it worth it?” They lean on their kitchen island and look at each other like they’ve been through a war. “It’s … been a challenge. But we’re going to make a lot of memories here.” They haven’t answered the question.
Watching the nostalgia episode that kicks off this season, it’s hard not to like Grand Designs seven times more than you already do. They’ve found a format, got it absolutely perfect first time, and stuck to it. McCloud has now watched over 150 sets of people annihilate their happiness in an attempt to make an architecturally brave lasting legacy. There’s something oddly honourable about that, something that feels profoundly human: once you reach vice president level at your company, once you marry someone you met at university, once you have two children in two years, how do you achieve nirvana, how do you scratch your mark on to the planet for ever?.
For a lot of people, the answer is to try to self-build underfloor heating into a barn. Seeing notable homes from across the 25-year run really underlines it in pen – you see babies who have grown into university freshers, you see too-ambitious projects that got bought up by development conglomerates, you see ill-advised freestanding balconies that have since been tacked on to the exterior. The point of Grand Designs, as it often reminds you, is they are building places for life to happen in – Christmases, birthdays, first breakups and joyful late-night dinners, to move an elderly parent into and toast their empty chair when they are gone – and, while often harebrained, there’s something strangely moving about watching people build their own personal nests. Give me 25 more years of it, please. Honestly, give me 50.
