Máire Treasa Ní Cheallaigh: Criticare “Marzi di miglioramento” a causa della crisi immobiliare è come lamentarsi di “MasterChef” a causa della fame nel mondo
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/maire-treasa-ni-cheallaigh-criticising-room-to-improve-because-of-the-housing-crisis-is-like-complaining-about-masterchef-due-to-world-hunger/a302847435.html
di Pension_Alternative
20 commenti
I know there was a discussion on here a few weeks ago about this, so I’m interested in people’s thought’s on Máire’s article.
From the article:
>At the end of every programme, everyone is happy. Everyone, that is, except those who grumble about the alleged tone-deafness of Room to Improve.
>
>The people complaining that it’s not indicative of real-life budgets need to realise that while it might not be their exact lived reality, it is for lots of others.
>Even for those of us who don’t have €300,000 for a refurb or an extension, it’s OK to just enjoy the show for what it is – a programme about once-in-a-lifetime changes to a home. A privilege that not everyone gets to enjoy.
>Room to Improve is more about the dynamic between Bannon and his clients rather than an hour of architectural digest, or a fixer-upper programme designed to teach us how to do something on a shoestring budget.
Máire concludes with
>There’s plenty of airtime given by the national broadcaster and other media outlets to housing, homelessness and rental costs already.
>Entertainment isn’t indifference. You can recognise there’s a housing crisis without demanding every programme focuses on solving it. The Sunday night slot is about escapism, just for that hour, and imagining what you’d do if you had the money before launching into another week of reality.
edit: Just to clarify. I am **not** Máire and this isn’t a pathetic attempt to drive traffic to an article. Although I’m sure that does happen.
Máire Treasa Ní Cheallaigh must be active on this sub… the post about it the other week calling it tone deaf was ridiculous.
Here’s the best part, it’s only not obvious to you Mary because you’re completely out of touch.
I watch these shows the same way I watch people build houses in the sims
Let’s do watching millionaires playing a ball game or driving in loops, while people can’t pay the bills next…./s
People don’t watch television for a dose of reality.
They should make a room to improve your childhood bedroom at 40 years old special edition so most people don’t feel left out. 🫠
Problem with Room to Improve is pretty easily fixed imo.
– Try covering improvments for everyone, not just upper middle class suburbs. You can do apartments, townhouses, people with only 50k & a bit of DIY know how, people with only 50k & no DIY know how. Its also way to Dublin centric.
– Dermot is a designer, fine, but he’s actively forcing people into costly improvements for vibe purposes. Thats fine for the upper middle class folks he’s covering, but i feel like they need a cohost who is all focused on bargains. They can hopefully counterbalance Dermot
– Many people can’t afford to present a flashy finish like they do at the end of each episode, so they should be open to covering projects that get the house/apartment to a unfurnished level, while focusing on the cost saving measures taken to get it to that point. The show doesn’t need to make everything look like Home of the Year at the end of it.
– Provide some bargain renovation tips while you go through the renovation. I get some inspiration from the show but nothing practical to save me money, like the way they described a laminate kitchen in the last ep was a load of nonsense. Laminate kitchens can look just as good as solid ones if you get design right and take good care of it
So yea, essentially they need to shift from a leafy suburb home showcase show towards a more practical and helpful one, which looks at projects across all price points
MasterChef would be very distasteful to produce in a country that was undergoing an unprecedented famine
I happened to watch the one Sunday night for the first time in years.
Bannon’s little sulk when the family didn’t want to go over budget on the kitchen was ridiculous, basically looking at them like they’re wasters.
No its not though.
Its a show. Has to look good etc. This required budgets that are very large. I guess for thirties year old who are locked out of the housing market it is upsetting. Its a tv show. Been in ireland we can’t ignore the issues though.
Another way of looking at it is, when Dermot tells a couple that a medium sized garden shed will be an extra €100k, you start to understand a little better why we have a house shortage.
We all know on room to Improve the budget is going to be 200-300k, we aren’t forced to watch it. RTE have other shows based around doing up houses on budgets. They also have shows were they actually just clean up houses that hoarders live in.
Dermot Bannon talked on radio last week that the first ever episode had a budget of 30k, if they tried to do a show with that budget now, no one would watch.
If we had a famine in Ireland, they wouldn’t show MasterChef. False equivalent. We have a genuine crisis in Ireland, but I wouldn’t expect the author to be aware or empathetic about it from her presumably south side Dublin home.
My biggest issue with the show is how atrociously bad the actual function aspect of the houses are, from room layout and needless “showpiece” areas where they do not fit or make sense, to furniture layouts like trying to put an L-shared couch in a central position of a room that is 8ft wide, leaving room to barely squeeze by either side, to randonly laid shite to look ‘nice’ in a single shot thst serves no purpose. You often see them at the end having a ‘sit down and chat’, just 3 or 4 of them, with someone awkwardly sat on a TV table etc because the house is simply nit designed to have people moving about in it.
We did a very large scale renovation over the last year, and Dermot Bannon seems to be a laughing stock amongst every builder, tradesperson, architect and engineer that we were dealing with throughout.
I actually liked this show despite all the houses ending up the same, but gone off it since people said Dermot Bannon is a prick
People want to escape reality. Why do you think fantasy novels are so popular right now?
Does she know we’re dealing with a housing crisis not a food crisis. And by ‘we’ I mean domestically within Ireland… Small minds
I’m not sure that the measure of room to improve should be “does it solve the housing crisis?”. It’s an entertainment programme ultimately.