What I Watched: Houses Edition

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that, apart from making it about 1/3 through Simon Winchester’s Pacific, I didn’t read anything on my staycation vacation. We were busy having family fun during the day, and I was busy recovering from said fun in the evenings. But I did some major binge-watching marathons, and I am here to tell you about it. I know, it’s your lucky day.

There is no way to say this would sounding like a creep – I tried at work, and failed – so I will just come out and say it: I like peeking into other people’s homes. I’m not your typical voyeur in the sense that I don’t care about what the inhabitants are doing, or even who they are; I just like to see how they’ve decorated their houses. Most HGTV shows don’t do it for me, because I only care about the 5 minutes spent on the “before” and “after”; the “how to” bores me to death. Luckily, Netflix has my number and has a bunch of shows that are just my thing … along with a convenient fast forward option for any extraneous “talky” parts.

My gateway drug in this case was a show called Amazing Interiors. The title is pretty self-explanatory; each episode highlights 3 homes that, while unprepossessing on the outside, have interesting and/or unique interiors. These range the gamut from the super fancy (one couple appeared to have bought an entire abandoned building just so they could create a ginormous, swanky penthouse apartment on the top 2 floors) to the weirdly specific (a guy built a sci-fi museum in his basement). None of these places were my style – in fact, one woman’s all pink (and I mean ALL PINK) apartment made me feel nauseous – but I loved seeing their owners’ creativity at play.

After I finished Amazing Interiors, next up was I Own Britain’s Best Home. This was a reality TV show from 2008 or thereabouts in which people competed for … well, again, the title is pretty self-explanatory. I loved seeing the different types of houses (cottages, castles, and everything in between) from different time periods (Georgian, Victorian, modern, etc.) though more often than not, the owners’ interior design choices were disappointing. So. Many. Barcelona. Chairs. I was also not a fan of the show hosts’ chattering, so I skipped over it. It made the whole series much easier to binge-watch. When I was done, I was happy to discover the Australian version of the show which, I must say, featured far more interesting architecture (and interior design) than the original. Were it not for my inconquerable fear of large creepy crawlies, I would be seriously considering a move – every locale featured on the show was stunning, especially the seaside towns.

Last but not least, I also discovered that Joel McHale’s Talk Soup (RIP) has been reincarnated (yay) as The Joel McHale Talk Show with Joel McHale on Netflix. I don’t watch reality TV, but I love watching Joel trash talk reality TV. I also have him to thank for the discovery of reddit/thathappened, which is a delightful way to waste time on the internet if you are so inclined.