Netflix invests in home makeover series
David Farnor | On 26, Feb 2018
Netflix is entering the real estate game with a brand new home makeover series.
Deadline reports that the streaming giant has placed an order for a 12-part show featuring extraordinary DIY and unique home transformations. Provisionally called Amazing on the Inside, the series is produced by Britain’s own Barcroft Productions.
Unscripted TV has become a growing focus for Netflix in the last year, from its sporting contest Ultimate Beastmaster to its reboot of Queer Eye. But in the reality series business, one staple has always proven popular, particularly with British audiences: property porn. Whether it’s nosying inside someone else’s house, eyeing up dream estates overseas or doing up a living room with a fresh lick of paint, we can’t get enough of our property telly. And so it’s perhaps no surprise that the streaming giant should turn its eye to that corner of the market, as it increasingly expands its non-fiction reach. Indeed, Deadline reports that Netflix’s acquisitions in the US, such as Escape to the Country and Grand Designs, have performed well.
Amazing on the Inside will reportedly uncover homes concealing an incredible secret, looking behind the exteriors to showcase passion projects for their owners, who have undertaken impressive home renovations to reflect their dreams and passions.
The half-hour show marks Barcroft’s first commission from Netflix, but the company has made a splash on traditional UK channels, from Channel 4 documentary Inside The Klu Klux Klan to the BBC’s Secrets of the Dinosaur Crater. Channel 4 owns a minority stake in the company, which joins several other British companies with non-scripted commissions, including Stellify Media, which is making a Jackass-meets-Wipeout gameshow called Flinch, Nutopia, which is producing six-part history series The Last Czars, and Tiger Aspec, which has already produced Jack Whitehall’s Travels with My Father.
Sam Barcroft, Peter Wyles and Jude Parker exec produce the home makeover series, which was shot in the UK, the USA, Spain, Nigeria and the Netherlands.