I Buying London is the British version of Netflix’s hugely successful Selling Sunset, in which eccentric rich people buy properties in Los Angeles from charming real estate agents whose personalities are chosen from a preset menu of reality shows from. I hate that it bases all of its dramatic tension on women pitted against each other. I hate that it makes Richard Curtis’ film Notting Hill look like a true documentary about the mean streets of London. I hate its “Idiots of England” gimmick, it’s clearly aimed at the international market. I hate its reverence for billionaires and its poor taste, its casual mention of celebrity names without the actual celebrities, even the canted drone footage that appears to have been shot by Red Arrow.
Which is weird because I don’t hate selling sunsets at all. It makes me reconsider now, but it doesn’t feel so bad to watch Selling Sunset’s Hollywood fantasy from a safe distance of 5,000 miles or so, with its millionaires and billionaires so far away that it feels like a cartoon. I view Selling Sunset as trash that you can drink, a TV that can be enjoyable to pass the time. It’s hard for me to feel the same way about Buying London because it’s boring and irritating, and the decorations on the trash aren’t my favorite either.
Then there’s the setting. Daniel Daggers runs DDRE Global, a luxury property company that sells homes in London and surrounding areas including Hertfordshire, Dorset and Dubai. DDRE listing prices often run into the millions, while real estate agent commissions run into the hundreds of thousands. He’s assisted by his team, a group of immaculately dressed women and a man named Ollie, who looks like he took a wrong turn while auditioning for “Made in Chelsea” and now has to put up with a woman named Julie. Anna’s interior designer flirts with him in front of him.
Daniel said London is the luxury real estate capital of the world. Everything we see here is ridiculously gorgeous. In Holland Park, west London, two estate agents were surprised by a bathtub carved from a single stone. Everything comes with an incredible number of bathrooms, bedrooms, walk-in closets, spas and pools. They talk about square footage, famous addresses and celebrity neighbors. Oddly enough, they describe in great detail what a roast dinner can be made in one kitchen, as if explaining a roast dinner to an almost unimaginable audience. This is England, theme park.
Yet it ultimately feels like a strange manifestation of the vast insecurities of the super-rich, who spend a fortune buying velvet, brass, and birdbaths for humans. I don’t want to be too conservative about this – although I’m about to be, so I apologize in advance. But across the UK, there is a painful and protracted housing crisis, and in London, the gap between rich and poor remains huge. After housing costs, 25% of residents live in poverty, and rents have risen by 10.6% in just one year. %. Like a dream.
Obviously this will be widely watched, as staring at the rich and their wallpapers could become a national sport. But politics aside, aside from the flamboyant, largely off-camera billionaires, it’s tired of being a reality show. In a show like this, where people play caricatures of themselves, you’d hope so, but we’ve seen all of these characters before. Daniel says Daniel Craig will play him in a movie about his life; women think he’s more like Austin Powers. They compete for his attention, but he admits that he sacrificed his personal life to build his career, blah, blah, blah. If you’ve seen any show like this, you know how it goes.
I suspect that Buying London was made with at least some compromises and that audiences will watch it not with joy but with anger. In that regard, I tip my hat to Netflix for manipulating me into a state of mild rage. Then again, this could be radical left propaganda in disguise. This is the Trojan horse (house?) that finally ends our passive acceptance of billionaires and debunks the idea that if we work hard enough, we can all have our own giant birdbath, as it were Like a huge scam?
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