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.