House Rules
Seven aims its show at middle Australia, with colloquial reactions from a renovation that could be happening in your street.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under Reviews, Top Stories
The money shot in renovation shows is always the Before / After reveal.
In House Rules the money shot is seeing the home owners step back into their homes after it has been entirely renovated by strangers. Seeing shock, joy, and disbelief on their faces is a great connection with the show’s core drama.
Like My Kitchen Rules, Seven’s home-grown Reality show again plays to middle Australia with its mix of 6 state-based couples, all of whom will renovate each other’s houses in a bid to have their mortgage paid off.
The mostly-Anglo couples include married, dating, parents and empty-nesters. Such is the production line of Seven casting that they could probably be interchanged with the MKR teams without anybody batting an eyelid. There’s a few hotties, mums and dads and an older couple. They are builders, HR managers, teachers, painters, aviation firefighters, community officers, production manager and a bloke named Bomber. One couple are even parents to a Brady Bunch-style blended family of 7 kids.
They are also well coached in reaction shots, smiles, sighs and gee-whiz looks, as host Johanna Griggs sets the scene.
“It’s going to take passion, determination and a whole lot of guts to end up on top,” she explains.
“Don’t think you know everything there is to know about House Rules.”
The first house to be renovated belongs to Candy and Ryan, an attractive young couple from Western Sydney. Their 5 rules to the teams include requests for an ‘Edgy and Arty’ home, with a Citrus and Concrete kitchen.
“We want the wow factor,” they say.
As the teams inspect their drab house they are unimpressed, but daunted by the task ahead of renovating one of 5 ‘zones.’
“This house is quite poxy,” says one bloke.
“This is like ‘a nothing room’,” says another.
It’s colloquial, uncomplicated stuff, but cleverly skewed to Seven’s roast chook audience. This could all be happening in your street, folks.
Candy and Ryan head off for a week’s holiday. “I can’t believe we handed over our keys,” they say -despite having taken the time to apply, presumably watch last year’s season and undergo an extensive audition test.
While the show slips in the obligatory shots of suppliers and sponsors (I’m grateful it’s not as overt as The Block) it is accompanied by Katy Perry, Jessica Mauboy and Miley Cyrus pop choons. This includes manual utes for each team. Given that two women can’t drive a manual I’m dubious about whether this was done to include more shots of sponsored-ute as we watch them learn to drive.
As teams renovate there’s the mandatory bickering, which graduates to open arguments, with inevitable tension and near-disasters. Walls disappear, carpets are ripped up, but at least there are also no silly, irrelevant challenges.
“I don’t know what I’m doing, so I’m quite slow,” admits one contestant.
One bloke doesn’t even have time to go to the toilet.
“Do you want a bottle to wee in?” his partner asks. Eww.
Returning once more are Interior Designer Carolyn Burns-McCrave and Building Supervisor Chester Drife (love that name). Judging is again conducted by ‘Home Beautiful’ editor Wendy Moore and towering architect Joe Snell. Compared to The Block, House Rules renovations don’t quite carry the “expensive” tag, but then neither are they working from a total shell. Judges are suitably concerned by some flaws, not letting teams off lightly.
House Rules is also narrated by an (uncredited) male, with Griggs again phoning in most of her performance. As a host she merely bookends this renovation week.
For the most part there is little change from House Rules 2013. The renovation and competition elements, at the early juncture, remain largely intact. But given the audience better understands the format (and it doesn’t have Celebrity Splash as its predecessor), I would expect a more solid performance this year. Knowing the way Seven plans its productions, I also anticipate new twists this season (another 6 teams would presumably drag this out too long).
If I was a betting man I would also put money on the ‘house reveal’ episode screening Sunday nights where that other show worked so well.
Given this is stripped several nights a week you’d need to be not completely fatigued by renovation yet. If you’re hooked on the genre, House Rules should tick most of the boxes for you.
House Rules premieres soon on Seven.
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- Tagged with Celebrity Splash, House Rules, The Block
17 Responses
One of the few Aussie series I’ve watch in full – great concept, though they need to tighten up the last couple of weeks so the first six weejs don’t become an irrelevance.
I am a chook eating Ms Middle class Aussie…so I guess that is why I like this show…although not glued to the set every episode…which is strange…because like KFed….never took to The Block or most other reality shows….except Domestic Blitz.
Hope House Rules is as good this year as last, although it started slowly it quickly gained momentum as the series progressed, much more enjoyable than The Block, which that seems to be done mainly by tradies, which doesn’t seem right.
nice can’t wait for house rules, but not happy with channel 7, putting way too much info in their previews 🙁
What do you mean when you say Middle Australia? Isn’t that the desert?
I never took to The Block, and have no interest in the cooking shows, but I was glued to House Rules last year. The stakes are that much higher with them renovating each others houses, and the reveals that much more interesting. Plus, last year was superbly cast – I hope for the same this year.
I agree that Johanna Griggs’ role is weak, if not pointless. Why doesn’t she do the voice over? And, as you’ve said previously David, could we have more hosts on TV rather than networks using the same faces on multiple shows? She’ll be on TV almost every day, Carrie Bickmore style.
I don’t like The Block and last year when this debuted i tried it and actually stopped watching it after a couple of episodes (seriously this was a train wreck) then something happened mid-season which made me come back to see what all the fuss was about as the ratings were rising and realised the show had improved out of sight due to Seven making it a much more watchable show. I can’t wait to see how they have improved it this year after last years bad start.
Hurrah! the real renovation show returns!
No thanks. Prefer The Block.
I predict more advertising this year now the show has established a good audience.
I love a good reno show and I really enjoyed the last series.
Can’t wait for it to start!
Well considering sometimes an actually commercial break has less ads than the segment you just watched on The Block less is always a good thing to hear.
One thing i hope they’ve changed is Johanna Griggs involvement in the reno’s.
It drove me mad last year how she was nowhere to be seen for the whole week and then at the last minute was barking orders around like she owned the place.
Hopefully they either they get her more involved over the whole week or tell her to tone it down.
As indicated, no big change there yet.
Totally over renovation and cooking shows. Give us a break! Thank god for the ABC and their brilliant drama so far this year.
Looking forward to see how they improve the show this year. Enjoyed it last year.
I worked in an office building filled with 200 middle-aged women (i.e. Seven’s ‘roast chook’ audience) during last year’s season of House Rules, and while it wasn’t a water cooler show at the beginning, a combination of expert marketing and positive word-of-mouth resulted in the entire office watching/talking about House Rules during its final weeks.
As long as they maintain a positive focus on the renovations, and shy away from the ‘soap opera’ elements of The Block, I don’t see why this can’t be another massive success.