Location, Location, Location: 20 Years and Counting, review

I KNOW what you are thinking. Can I really have spent 20 years of my life watching two posh sorts show punters round mid-priced houses with scope for an extension round the back?

“Have we changed in 20 years?” Phil Spencer asked his oppo, Kirstie Allsopp, at the start of this look back in languor show featuring the best bits of the Channel 4 property programme.

“Have you looked at your hair?” shrieked Kirstie with all the JCB-in-a-china-shop delicacy for which she is known.

Britain’s second most famous couple who are not a couple (the first is This Morning’s Holly and Phil) really have been at this lark for a long time. Sometimes they have even found properties people go on to buy. Mostly, though, each episode is a lesson in home-hunting reality: what the buyer can afford versus what they want. Everything is a compromise, except for the cardinal rule set out in the title.

On that, Kirstie had some shock news. “I bought in the wrong area,” she told Phil as they reminisced about their first flats (this episode was about virgin buyers, next week it is homes by the sea). Kirstie’s mum thought the neighbourhood was safe, but the transport links were rubbish and it was a long way from her friends. So you see, Kirstie has been there, done that, and got the corns from a twice daily slog to and from a distant Tube station to show for it.

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(We also learned that from a young age she had a bottom drawer full of tea towels and sundries, just waiting for her first home; and granny bought her a washing machine for her 21st.) The pair raced through house hunts down the years, starting with their first, a search for a one bed flat in central-ish London. Kate, the buyer, had £100,000 to spend. Today that would probably get you a part-share in a parking space.

A laddish Phil and a foxy Kirstie, all knee high boots, swinging hair and shades, strode the London streets like Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons. Two hip young gunslingers taking on the world. Her voice was softer, her manner less confident. Phil hasn’t changed a bit, apart from the receding forehead.

The essential building blocks of the show have stayed the same, too. “We headed to a quiet bar to think things through,” said Phil in that first show. Cue the call to estate agents to put in a cheeky offer well under the asking price. Then the tense wait.

Before getting to that point there were tours round houses, Kirstie being up front and pushy, Phil adopting a more softly-softly approach. Kirstie hated it when Phil said, as he did often, “It’s up to them.” Kirstie wanted to give buyers the stats on the best time to start a family so they would stop dithering about the number of bedrooms needed.

We did not learn much that was new as Ben and Laura, Jess and Sam, and Michelle and Philip, followed the original Kate into the snakes and ladders game that is buying a house. But then after 20 years we have probably taken in Kirstie and Phil’s advice by osmosis. Who does not know by now to look beyond the dreaded woodchip, or the value of knocking through?

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What we did leave with was a sense that Kirstie and Pip, as she calls him, have done well out of Location, Location, Location. Through dedication, dedication, dedication they have transformed a modest idea for a property show into a successful double decade career with spin-offs including Love it or List It. That’s pretty good going in TV today.

It’s all about chemistry, too, with the pair’s genial brother and sister/best pals bickering making whatever time they have on screen fly by.

Here’s to the next 20 years. Who knows, by then the location in question might be Mars.

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