One day I’d like to conduct an anthropological study into the differences between British and American cultures ?? really dig deep into the history and find out what makes us so different from our former colonial cousins.
However, since I lack the necessary resources (patience, library card, air miles), I’ve decided just to sit in front of the telly and conduct a study into home makeover shows instead.
On a bank holiday weekend, it’s possible to tune into the Home channel and watch entire marathons of the chummy British fixer-upper programme DIY: SOS, followed by eighty-seven hours of its US equivalent, the glossy, life-changing festival of hope that is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
The two programmes share the same basic structure: a friendly host leads a design team into a community, where they meet a family whose home is in a state of disrepair. The family are sent away for a week, their house is done up by the design team who all learn a valuable lesson, and the family returns for a tearful reveal of their shiny new abode.
However, despite these identical skeletons, the meat on these two programmes is as different as chicken and pterodactyl, and consumption results in two very different after-tastes. Extreme Makeover is more than a clever name ??these people don’t just repair the house, they knock it over and build a better one ??it’s bold, brash, unashamedly inspiring and earnestly hopeful. DIY:SOS just shrugs and gets the job done with a knock-knock joke and a pint of cider at the end. It’s low key, understated, even apologetic. Here, so that you don’t have to think about it, are the differences:
The Host:
Extreme Makeover is hosted by designer and former model Ty Pennington. He is like an ageless Zeus with ADHD and hair gel. As well as leading the team, he works on a secret project, and is contagiously upbeat all the time.
DIY: SOS is helmed by failed actor Nick Knowles, an unshaven muppet who trudges around like Wolverine’s cousin in a purple fleece. His leadership style consists of questioning his team’s abilities and muttering mild sexual innuendos.
The Design Team:
Devotedly following Ty Pennington, Extreme Makeover‘s rotating design team usually includes two or more of the following:
Paul DiMeo ??a friendly uncle type who likes baseball, apple pie, and the FDNY
Paige Hemmis ??a pink tool belt, strapped to a carpenter who has now had so many face lifts her ears are in danger of meeting round the back.
Ed Sanders ??he’s an Englishman, but he’s an American version of an Englishman. His accent is 150% cockney.
Michael Moloney ??An amalgam of all Americans, his head resembles a leather cube with teeth. He buys furniture.
Tracy Hutson ??I won’t hear a bad word said about Tracy Hutson. Just back off, ok?
DIY: SOS‘s motley gang of ne’er do wells is made up of:
Billy Byrne – a cheeky chirpy electrician who gets teased just for being in the room.
Chris Frediani ? a West Country plasterer who has taken watching paint dry to the next level.
Julian Perryman ??the other half of Chris?s gently comedic double act (ie, he's the one who says ?Who?s there??).
Julia – the most recent designer, and token female. She's done a better job than her predecessors of being accepted by her male counterparts, but they still haven't bothered to put her surname on the website. It’s as if they find it weird that there’s a girl on a building site.
The needy family
In Extreme Makeover, we meet the family through their application video, as the designers watch and cry from the comfort of their luxury tour bus. The couple are high school sweethearts ? one a fire fighter, the other a stay-at-home mum who runs a local basketball team for recovering gangsters. They are about 23 and already have a full spectrum of children. One is a quarterback who LOVES the Pittsburgh Donkeys; one is a future kidney specialist; one is too young to like anything but dinosaurs; the other has spina bifida and is Mexican. The parents may also have adopted five local kids whose tragic parents were tragically killed in a tragic car crash. They all love each other so much you want to cry.
Their British counterparts on DIY: SOS resemble those two berks who held you up in the queue at Asda by continually placing unexpected items in the bagging area. They are a recruitment consultant and a lost claims officer for the local tumble weed centre.
The house
The Extreme Makeover application video forces you to fall hopelessly in love with the family before revealing that a) tragedy struck, or b) it wasn’t always easy. Cancer, tornadoes, stray bullets, and rare muscle-wasting respiratory diseases all rear their ugly heads and, despite the family’s greatest efforts, they are left with medical bills piling up, the family business in tatters, toxic mould spores in the air, and ? worst of all ? the house falling apart.
Back on this side of the pond, the tragedy is slightly less dramatic. We learn that Steve tried to do up the kitchen and the bathroom last year and then just sort of never got round to finishing it really. Less a phoenix trying to rise up from the flames, and more a chimpanzee falling asleep on the toilet.
The meeting:
Having seen what they're up against, the Extreme Makeover designers stride up to the front door and Ty extracts the family from the remains of their house with a megaphone. As they pour out of the front door, the dad jumps up and down in rapture, the mum falls to her knees in tears, and the kids flock to touch the hem of Pennington’s magnificent garment. They invite the designers in for a tour of the house and are then dispatched to Disney World in a limousine. While they are away, they will perform a duet with LeAnn Rimes while tackling the Pittsburgh Donkeys in front of the actual president.
Here in Blighty, Knowles swans into the family’s gaff like he owns the place, and lords it over the unfinished rooms. He does a smug ?get-a-load-of-this-guy? face and delivers a run down of the shoddiness of the work. He appears to be completely ignorant of DIY or design, but does a good job of making everyone feel uncomfortable.
The build
In Extreme Makeover, the build itself is just a sub-plot; a convenient backdrop to frame the real story of family and community. A local builder is contracted to build the new house in seven days. He blubs to camera as he tells us that the family’s story touched his heart and that this week is all about the family, and not about him, or Jessop Homes dot com forward slash bookings.
A new house is swiftly erected, and the designers huddle to talk about the kids’ bedrooms, pretending to come up with ideas from scratch. The kidney boy gets a kidney room; the football kid gets a football room (cockney Ed inexplicably saws footballs in half and glues them on the walls), and so on. Pretty much any noun the children uttered to the designers becomes the theme of their bedroom and will stay that way until they grow up and move out. Years from now, the dinosaur boy will have to squeeze his gangly 17-year-old frame into a tyrannosaurus shaped bed.
Meanwhile, on DIY: SOS, Billy Byrne bumbles around the house connecting up the wiring and poking cables through walls like a child building a train set. He is unaware that Knowles has just attached a piece of paper to his back that says ‘tease me (in a way that undermines my confidence but doesn’t quite fall within the BBC’s anti-bullying regulations)’.
The others go about their business, building the wrong walls and installing the wrong ovens as Knowles shakes his head and re-describes the errors as sarcastically as possible with his hands on his hips. Eventually, the team gets tired and goes to the pub, returning on the last day to finish off the furniture. When they're done, it looks like a regular house, albeit with some questionable original artwork on the wall, such as a pair of shoes glued to a canvass that will be on ebay ten minutes after the film crew leaves.
The reveal
The Extreme Makeover reveal sequence is so iconic that has its own catchphrase. Ty, the family, and the gathered mortals incant the sacred words: ?Bus driver! Move that bus!? and a miracle is unveiled.
The bus drives away, the music swells, and the family erupts into a full-volume mixture of relief, joy, shock and gratitude as they feast their eyes on the new dream home that looms over the space where their nightmares once stood. Even though we have seen this moment six or seven times in the ad break flash-forwards, it still tugs the heart strings enough for the most hardened viewer to develop a mild case of the tears.
As the great American family gets used to the idea that this house now belongs to them, the contracted builder lets slip that he’s just paid off the mortgage and also put another hundred grand in a medical fund, to go with the scholarships paid for by a neighbourly whip round. The family thanks everyone involved and the ABC network, and one of them usually says, ‘What word means more than thank you?’. The designers all nod silently and, as the sun sets, they’ve all learned something (again) about why it’s so important to put others before yourself.
In the UK reveal, ?Move that bus? is replaced with ?OK, you can open your eyes now?. The family, already standing in the finished room, raise their eyelids and gaze upon the off-white glow of a job they now longer have to think about getting round to. If any tears are shed, they are quickly brushed under the carpet, or forced back down the tear ducts into the cranial lobes to gestate into poetry or tumours.
The mum nods and says she likes the colour. The dad checks with the mum and then agrees that he likes it too. Nick Knowles thinks it’s all about him, as he milks the reveal for all its worth. He drip feeds the hint of another surprise: ?We, uh… thought about you, and, uh? what you might need, and so… we, um? and then… well, um…? eventually admitting that they have fixed up the bathroom AND the kitchen. The family seem stunned and sedated, rather than relieved or grateful. It’s as if the British mentality malfunctions in the face of unexpected generosity. They’re not speechless; they literally don’t know what to say.
Knowles turns to camera and reminds us how important and hilarious he is for helping this family, high fiving himself as the credits roll. The same thing has happened as on the American show, but the feelings are completely different for all concerned.
In conclusion, Americans and Brits are clearly not the same but, despite our differences, we all want someone to come round and sort out our plumbing while we’re away. Since beginning this anthropological study, I’ve developed a yearning for a new kitchen, but also for fuller lashes, gravity-defying hair, and a happy period always. Perhaps I’m not the target audience for the Home channel after all.
This was a guest blog by Jimi Odell, whose Blogtired is a work of genuine majesty
Paul Gibson says
Bravo. A bloody huge “Bravo”.
cully says
as a person who has some knowledge of the diy:sos experience when half of my friend’s house fell down and the team came to help sort out the mess, i can confirm that nick is a smug git and the second day activities are conducted under the cloud of rather substantial hangovers.
great piece, jimi [::]
T-Cake says
One of the funniest articles I’ve read in a long time. Thanks.
ballanross says
Nice piece of fun writing, fun to read. Thanks!