Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 30 April

Home (AppleTV+, 2020)

It was my turn to con­trib­ute a sug­ges­tion to RNZ’s What We’re Watching series yes­ter­day and I am delighted to recom­mend this one to you, too.

There are so many real estate shows! Fix it and flip it renov­a­tions, tiny homes, Alaskan cab­ins. There’s some­thing for every taste.

Thank you for read­ing Funerals & Snakes. This post is pub­lic so feel free to share it.

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In 2020 AppleTV+ jumped into this bur­geon­ing mar­ket but in typ­ic­al Apple fash­ion, they did it with taste and class. Directed by a range of acclaimed film­makers, each epis­ode of Home – except the last – joins the story after the houses have been built and each one centres the people who are at the heart of each one.

From the Swedish glass­house cab­in in epis­ode one (which helped a fath­er con­nect with his aut­ist­ic son) to the con­ver­sion of aban­doned build­ings on the deprived Southside of Chicago into vibrant and excit­ing com­munity facil­it­ies, and the mod­ern­ist Austin home built on top of a former tox­ic brown­fields site, but which is now almost totally blen­ded into restored wet­lands, each epis­ode is dis­tinct­ive and rewarding.

My favour­ite two are a com­plete con­trast. Bamboo is the fast­est grow­ing struc­tur­al tim­ber you can get, and the archi­tect and developer of some incred­ible lux­ury Bali lodges delights in telling us that none of the wood in her build exis­ted more than five years earlier.

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And the mod­est Hong Kong archi­tect who has con­ver­ted the tiny (34 square metre) apart­ment he grew up in into a home of infin­ite vari­ety thanks to move­able walls, a Murphy bed, and an atti­tude towards space that we could all learn a thing or two from.

The final epis­ode does fol­low a build as a char­ity attempts to use com­plex 3D con­crete print­ing to solve the prob­lem of afford­able hous­ing for the poorest people in rur­al Mexico, remind­ing us that all these glor­i­ous homes are inac­cess­ible to 99 per­cent of the plan­et, no mat­ter how inspir­ing they are.

Click here to see more images and read more about why I love this show so much.

Where to watch Home

Worldwide: Streaming on AppleTV+

Editor’s note

If you haven’t already, I’d recom­mend you make the occa­sion­al vis­it to the F&S news­let­ter home page – substack.funeralsandsnakes.net. There, for New Zealand sub­scribers, I have broken all the news­let­ter con­tent up by stream­ing pro­vider, etc.

That way, if you are just look­ing for a sug­ges­tion for some­thing to watch on Netflix, you’ll see recent updates that relate to that service.

I know that not every­body reads every word every day, so that’s a good way to catch up on some­thing rel­ev­ant that you might have missed.

Archive entries that are over a month old are avail­able to paid sub­scribers only.

There’s also a ‘lead­er­board’ for refer­rals. The most refer­rals in any giv­en cal­en­dar month will get a spe­cial prize from me (and Madman Entertainment). You’ll need a min­im­um of three refer­rals in order to be considered.

And the ori­gin­al ver­sion of the Funerals & Snakes web­site still exists, and is the source of quite a few of these entries. I’m slowly going through and tidy­ing those pages up (and adding reviews to Letterboxd) as I have time.