Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 8 October

Property Brothers (Scott & Scott, 2010-)

Searching for an “on this day” post in the archives, I was reminded of this cel­eb­ra­tion of a show I described as “the Ted Lasso of home improve­ment television”.

The Property Brothers are two All-American square-jawed Canadians named Drew and Jonathan Scott – tooth­some identic­al twins with easy pat­ter and early onset dad jokes. Drew is real estate agent. His job is to take the dreams of some very aver­age North American couples and crush them under weight of cap­it­al­ism. The show always fol­lows the same format – we learn the cli­ents’ hopes and dreams (“open concept”, “some­where for the kids”, “close to my par­ents”, “we’re scared of renov­a­tions”), Drew shows them some­thing per­fect and then tells them that prop­erty is going for double their budget.

Then Jonathan, the design­er and con­tract­or, steps in and says if they are pre­pared to look at some­thing a little less, shall we say, fin­ished, he can work his magic and give them their dream home.

They all then go and look at some unprom­ising prop­er­ties – when they get to Atlanta many of these appear to be owned by the bank or have oth­er­wise been aban­doned – and then the cli­ents have to choose between two of them.

Jonathan then com­mences demoli­tion dur­ing which he dis­cov­ers some ter­rible flaw or oth­er (“asbes­tos!”, “lead pipes!”) which will use up all the con­tin­gency in the budget. Usually at some point he tells the cli­ents to leave him alone so he can fin­ish before the final reveal at the end where the tear­ful cli­ents are simply blown away by the design choices they once doubted, the broth­ers flirt with every­one and it all ends hap­pily ever after.

They are quite lit­er­ally all like this. The only vari­ations are in the size of the house – we have seen one apart­ment renov­a­tion – the eth­ni­city of the cli­ents and the sea­son of the year. It is tre­mend­ously satisfying.

I wrote this appre­ci­ation back in 2020 and the Scott empire has grown even more mag­ni­fi­cent since. They’ve made 13 dif­fer­ent series includ­ing celebrity home makeovers and children’s anim­a­tion. Incredible work ethic.

There’s a lot of not-cool home improve­ment and real estate tele­vi­sion out there — we’ve always avoided shows that are just about mak­ing money — but there’s some­thing very reward­ing about watch­ing these identic­al jour­neys each week1.

Where to watch Property Brothers S1

Aotearoa: Streaming on Neon

Australia: Streaming on FoxtelNow or Binge

Canada: Streaming on StackTV, Discovery+ or Fubo

Ireland: Not cur­rently available

India: Streaming on Discovery+

USA: Streaming on HBO Max, Discovery+ or HGTV

UK: Not cur­rently available