“It’s like taking a trip back in time,” says Angela Scanlon early in the new season of the BBC’s Your Home Made Perfect (BBC2, Tuesday). The Co Meath presenter is not talking about working with RTÉ but referring to an Art Deco hotel she is visiting in the company of architect Will. He’s showing her the inspiration for his kitchen do-over inspired by “the pyramids and the Titanic”.
Scanlon is an effusive presenter – at one point in the series opener, she tells mild-mannered Will to “show us your pyramids”. It’s the same quality she brings to her RTÉ chatshow Ask Me Anything with Angela Scanlon. That series is built around her outgoing personality and, depending on the chattiness or not of individual guests, she sometimes has to carry the entire endeavour on her own.
Over on the BBC, better use is made of her turbocharged pizazz. It is deployed more sparingly and, in the second of eight episodes (BBC Two, Tuesday 8pm), there is a contrast between her outgoing personality and that of relatively buttoned-down architects Laura Jane Clark and Damien Burrows (in all, six architects will feature through the season).
The experts have been tasked with redesigning the Southhampton home of project manager Lee and actor Darren, who have become frustrated at the building’s eccentric design, with its wonky stairs and lack of natural lighting (“it’s like a rabbit warren – the space isn’t being used to its maximum,” says an exasperated Darren).
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A couple looking to re-do their house and seeking fancy architectural advice? It sounds like Room to Improve UK-style – and that’s what Your Home Made Perfect is. The difference is that there is no Dermot Bannon factor – but lots (or a reasonable amount) of Angela Scanlon sizzle.
She does well to breathe life into what can be a dry subject. Housing extensions, lest we forget, are a national obsession only in Ireland. In the UK, people respond a lot less feverishly to the prospect of a new kitchen or an expanded utility room.
In the case of Lee and Darren, no prying neighbours try to share their opinion. They are unburdened by family members eager to chime in. The couple are on their own, making things more straightforward but depriving the viewer of the twitching-curtains factor that you sometimes get with Room to Improve (especially when everyone calls around at the end for a proper snoop).
Still, there is a gimmick in that the show makes heavy use of virtual reality. Clark and Burrows create virtual mock-ups of their designs, and Lee and Darren are then invited to step in and sample them up close by strapping on dystopian headsets.
Scanlon, meanwhile, keeps it fluffy. “He does have a very calming presence – he’d make a lovely priest, ” she says of Julien, one of the architects featured in episode one. When Yesim and Hasan, the householders in that same instalment, say Will’s design is like a mix of their home decor DNA, she quips that it would be a chore to “push out” a “house baby”.
Irish presenters, from Graham Norton to Liz Bonnin, have done well in the UK. But only some have managed simultaneous careers at home and abroad. Scanlon has made an impression on RTÉ and BBC. She’s better on the Beeb, and if that says something about her, it surely says a lot more about RTÉ.
