Radio Times

In shows like Property Ladder, enthusiastic amateurs with no experience buy a house, knock a wall through and do up the bathroom in the hope of turning a quick buck. In contrast, Grand Designs follows projects that begin life as muddy plots, or involve reconstruction beyond the realms of mere "renovation". They're the brainchildren of people with know-how and skill, or those pursuing such a unique and original passion that they have to invent cutting-edge technologies or revive lost skills to make it a reality.

Grand Designs is also an example of great storytelling. But it doesn't simply chart the evolution of an amazing piece of architecture, it also explores what motivates the people behind it, and recognises the stress and sheer hard work involved. So we meet the couple who lost their lovingly restored thatched cottage to a devastating fire, and went and rebuilt it all over again; the castle enthusiast who enlisted a team of artisan stonemasons to save a crumbling 14th-century ruin from oblivion; a family who built an environmentally friendly home into the side of a hill; a woodsman who almost single-handedly created a house entirely from coppiced trees.

The real key to Grand Designs, though, is presenter Kevin McCloud.

A designer with a degree in the history of art and architecture, Kevin certainly has the technical grounding to front a show about innovative building projects. But he also has boundless enthusiasm, and a whole lot of charisma.

Having once considered a career as an opera singer (his speaking voice suggests a pleasant baritone), McCloud has admitted to enjoying the performance aspect of TV presenting, and it shows. His enthusiastic, at times playful, presenting style, along with his undoubted knowledge of the subject, gives him an impressive ability to communicate technical ideas to us lay viewers without any danger of us switching over, or dozing off.

I sometimes wonder whether there's more to Kevin's charisma than a flirtatious manner. After all, there seem to have been an inordinate number of Grand Designs babies, and when a young couple announce the happy news, Kevin's always particularly delighted. Not that I'm suggesting anything untoward you understand, but could it be at least that Kevin McCloud exudes some sort of potent stimulating pheromones?

Well, no. Grand Designs follows projects that take years to complete, so births, marriages and even deaths are bound to feature. It's no surprise, then, that Kevin develops a genuine connection with the people whose stories he's telling. Standing on a damp building site, for instance, in front of a tarpaulin-draped skeleton of a building, he worries:

"I can't help wondering," Kevin confesses to the camera, "whether Frances and Jim have taken on too much here." And when things are looking up, we can expect to hear my favourite of his presenting techniques, the patented McCloud double-beat: "It was touch-and-go there for a while," Kevin muses, "but with the windows finally in, perhaps - perhaps - they really are going to pull this off."

Kevin McCloud really is an old romantic. Take his comments in a recent episode about a couple who purchased a ruined 19th-century church in County Mayo, Ireland: "They fell in love with it like you would fall in love with a complete stranger on a chance meeting." Pure poetry.

"This entire project has been driven as much from the heart as from the head," he continues. "There again, the best - the biggest - decisions in life all do come from the heart."

Grand Designs leaves us breathless with the scale, vision and complexity of the projects it charts, and envious of the beautiful homes that emerge from them. But, most of all, it relies on one important truth. Home is - is - where the heart is.

Aside from my amateur love of architecture and my willingness to have my limited knowledge extended I watch GD mainly for the uplift it gives me due to its presenter plying me time and time again with the now rare offer of hearing cultured and poetic English!

Even the accompanying music is pleasant and offered at the right noise level something a lot of TV programmes don't manage.

To cap it all, the programme makes for wonderful technical wall paper should I be too tired to actively listen, which, I must add, has so far not happened.

I also love watching it as despite 'only' being the tenant of a very small one bedroomed sheltered flat, I truthfully can watch all of the programmes without experiencing any jealousy. I am very happy with my low status dwelling space.

The only other living space I might want to swap my present abode for is a mobile caravan that, as some others have pointed out, and I wholeheartedly agree with, can be moved when the urge takes one.

Still, if you have the money, why not spend it if that is what you wish to do with it. Good luck to those.

Whilst others spent I have the pleasure of watching repeats of revisits.

Well done Channel 4/Kevin MCloud.

I'm glued to Grand Designs. If I can't be at home to watch it, there's no quibbling about taping it for as soon as consumption. I don't have the wherewithal to undertake such building projects, but am fascinated by those who do, and who put up with so much to accomplish their dreams (even if some of them seem sterile--don't people have bookshelves anymore?). I would like to see more of the finished structure at the end, but other than that, Kevin is a delight--macho and forthright and admitting to being astounded when he is actually astounded--and definitely makes the programme.

I so enjoyed Grand Design on the 4 March. Good luck to the dairy farmer and I so look forward to visiting the art gallery. There was a clue to the whereabouts.

what an amazing use of tyres and glass bottles in this weeks design....this is what I regard as a good design with consideration for the environment and old fashioned values such as voluntary work!The programme was abroad by the way partly due to cost but also because this construction would not be allowed in the UK! Can you believe it?

In Grand Designs we used to get all the fascinating details about solutions to technical and construction problems. Not much of that now. We seem to get more and more about babies and family troubles and less and less about the build. In the last program for example the seemed to be nothing about what heating, plumbing and insulation methods were used and why, and at what cost.

And, as was pointed out by another contributer, once finished and lived in, why do the houses look so empty and sterile as if the owners had no possessions other than a bit of avant-guard furniture?

Let me say to begin with that I love Kevin McCloud. He is uber intelligent and a perfect presenter, he IS Grand Designs. What I find revolting however are the typical Couple having their dream home constructed. They are nearly always revoltingly successful - "Benedict runs an international IT business and Bethesda is an extremely sought after interior designer" They're always passionate about design and insist on only the finest finishes. They visit the sight in their designer wellies approving the size of the laser cut holes in their steel walkway or various other prissy details. The couple recently shown had a stack of logs millimetre perfect under their designer fireplace, I can't wait to see their baby turn up and scatter toys around their surgically constructed showhome. I'd love to hear a couple say occasionally to their joiner or whoever - "Yeah, that'll do" All that ranting aside, it's still a great programme.

Hi, Alice. Unfortunately Channel 4 had to change the running order of the series after many TV schedules were published (however, we were able to reflect this change here on RadioTimes.com). From programme-makers Talkback Thames:

"Kevin had a skiing accident last week while in France, as a result he has been unable to travel home to finish voiceover for what was due to be the first programme in the new series, resulting in a change in running order."

The Newport episode will now be shown on Wednesday 11 February.

Best wishes,

Helen

Hi, Alice. Unfortunately Channel 4 had to change the running order of the series after many TV schedules were published (however, we were able to reflect this change here on RadioTimes.com). From programme-makers Talkback Thames:

"Kevin had a skiing accident last week while in France, as a result he has been unable to travel home to finish voiceover for what was due to be the first programme in the new series, resulting in a change in running order."

The Newport episode will now be shown on Wednesday 11 February.

Best wishes,

Helen

What happened to the scheduled programme which should have gone out yesterday all about a restoration project in Newport? Instead it was all about a project in Bath!

I've noticed about the number of babies conceived during filming (while the parents should be worrying about the costs and delays on their project). I once asked Kevin about it in a webchat but he ignored the question…

...and Grandina - yes. It would be so much more fun to see how these white boxes actually work as homes.

Responding to earlier comments, I always find the absurd claims for eco-friendliness made by these house builders ludicrous and I dearly wish the participants in these shows would just avoid the issue. It is not in any respect eco friendly to erect huge new homes in the middle of beautiful stretches of landscape. I respect people want to create these mini palaces - why not - but to then pretend they are being eco friendly?? Yuk. Middle class hypocrisy. How about renovating an existing building and leaving the countryside wild so that future generations can enjoy it unspoilt?

I have already posted in the forums about this show because I have really enjoyed previous series and I like Kevin McLeod's presentation but I am in total agreement about the dullness of the recent projects. Too much cash, not nearly enough enterprise or imagination, and more or less identical outcomes the success of which largely seems to depend upon the wonderful view enjoyed from the vast windows. So the house is really just a meaningless box through which to see something that is there anyway. Not to criticise the participants but the programme needs much better projects.

Sorry, but I do agree with MatMag about the lack of inspiration. I want to see the kind of stuff the show used to feature where people had limited resources and amazing ideas.

Last night's was a bit dull. (I'm not of course complaining about Great Kev). The boxy structure reminiscent of a number of recent ones I've seen on the programme (roughly twenty inches high with some greenish blueish furze towards the edges of my screen, tiny people running around and some waiting for the usual piece of glass and men in hats and whining). I felt the highpoint was the examination of bits of wood in a wood, or perhaps the clear explanation of the rigidification of wee cardboard boxes by insertion of complex modelled structures calling for almost no imagination. I can't help feeling that some of the recent complaints (about set decorating and lack of mess) seem slightly trivial when squishing in with inlaws/homelessness et al is an issue for some people. I know youngish middlish class people can hardly actually be blamed for being in a position to engage provincial architects to squeeze out another box to budget but these boxes don't necessarily connect with all the expressions that get tossed around in connection with design—design as some super virtue etc. Design as some life changing thing ... when actually people just revert to their pre-stressed complacent ways with just added smugness. I mean, what really, actually, is being achieved?

Who said KC criticises with sensitivity?

In a recent program he commented (to the owner, rather than to camera) about the "Stygian gloom" of the interior of their new build. But he says it with such a twinkle in his eye that he manages to avoid being slapped!

Ah, wouldn't have it any other way...

My daughter is a newly fledged architect and we live 400 or so miles apart.. every week nearly we ring after the show to discuss the design, and it has become a regular virtual cuppa for us in our busy lives. I enjoy the presenter Kevin Macleod for his interesting presence, and then I learn loads from my daughter who is far more knowledgeable than I am on these matters. Apart from this programme I rarely watch TV...glad to know many others share my good taste;-)Thank you BBC!

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No, I like McCloud too. I like the delicate negotiation he makes between satirising his 'clients' and their silly faith and bludgeoning us all with generalising nonsense about design. I also bet lots of actual architects watch it—tearing back to some pod-style accommodation in N4 or its borders to watch it on some I-pod type extension (perhaps not, perhaps they subscribe to B4 a new service from Channel 4 transmitting telly before it's made). Anyway, it's obviously highly interesting/revealing about people; a fact that is carried into the blog... I admired the lady with the caravan. Caravans should be the backbone of this country not fatuous palaces entirely powered by their owners' smugness and savings as extracted from them. An elderly mobile home when static has very little carbon footprint I'd think. And it can be moved if wanted to vary the view or even reception.

Hi Shirleyb

Wow, wouldn't that be fantastic? I wish I was better connected - I'd make sure Kevin heard about you and your Mini Designs idea.

Your compact, eco-friendly home sounds like it could be the future of housing. Despite how much I enjoy watching these incredible projects unfold on GD, I do often wonder about these so-called eco-friendly, incredibly efficient houses - surely it is neither of these things for just two people to be living in such huge structures, with however many acres of land all to themselves...?

More power to you and your mobile home!

Paul

Of course I'm a fan of the programme but in these days of the carbon footprint etc. I'm rather puzzled as to why there is rarely any mention of energy costs(in any great detail) and main services to the house etc.In the latest programme(Wed. 13.2.08) it was mentioned that the heating was 'under floor' but nothing was said about why this was preferred. Surely there could be an assessment on the merits or otherwise of this method of heating? Again what are the negative elements of huge glass areas? Is there a technical innovation,other than double glazing, that could alleviate heat loss in glass panels?

We've been watching it because we are stunned (fascinated) by architects (last week was a perfect example of self-centered smugness in combination with provinciality and the survival of slacks that typifies them as a bunch); McCloud usually picks that up, though he was too gentle on the complacency/dullard and boxy fabrications of last week's pair. I mean, they'd just obviously looked at a couple of mags—and the isolation and arrogance of the pair... all that money and time and self-absorption focused in two lumps, I was sorry for their sweet but doomed kids. MatMag.

Wow, I didn't think I liked Grand Designs but Paul Jones' passionate avowal causes me to question my intractable nature. I shall watch the next one, whenever that may be.

I love this programme too, and particularly approve of the way Kevin McCloud has the guts to press the creators to justify excesses that really are pointless and ugly. Glancing at the gap in my kitchen that's still waiting for a built-in oven, I was seething with annoyance at the woman who was talked into having double the appliances to make her kitchen symmetrical, by a kitchen salesman. Loved her ten grand chandaliers though...

Paul Jones' analysis is spot on. Grand Designs is grand too and Kevin McCloud is perfect. If I'm not that interested in the project Mr McCloud's interest and presentation keeps me glued to the programme.