Grand Designs Australia Season 12 review: stunning builds and stunning downfalls

When the Grand Designs franchise first branched out into Australia, it had one big problem. While on the surface the reality series is about following people as they realise their dream of building a home suited to their unique taste and environment, it hides a darker secret: audiences want those eager builders to suffer.

The Grand Designs formula

A huge part of what has made the original UK series such a hit is the enjoyably predictable pathway to disaster that many appear to follow. It’s not just the obvious mistakes that come up time and time again, as chirpy and over-confident types proudly describe plans for massive homes they assure us will only take months to build. It’s the thrill when they then move their family into a rundown caravan or leaky shed because their dream home will obviously be finished by Christmas. Right?

As months drag on into years, a laundry list of disasters can and often does befall the poor chumps who just wanted to build a place to call their own. Renovations can fall foul of heritage listings; dodgy builders come and go at a rapid pace. Why not build the entire house out of some new kind of marine insulation you can only get seven countries away? Or try to live in a cave?

Then there’s the human toll. Forget about cracks in the foundation. If there’s any kind of crack in the relationship going in, expect to see it magnified a thousandfold. Someone’s not fully on board? One partner has slightly different ideas than the other? Children are entering their teens? Have the popcorn handy because the family has just moved into the house of pain. And that’s before an ending where the massive complex is completed but the builders now have to sell because of divorce.

Sometimes, of course, things do go smoothly. This is usually because the person having the house built is insanely wealthy, which gives the format a steady stream of architecturally impressive but morally bankrupt homes to balance out the occasional environmentally-sensitive mud palace that a deranged hippie has decided to build all on his own.

Grand Designs finds its Australian voice

It’s a tricky to balance the needs of audiences when some just want tours of nice houses and others want to see deluded fools suffer. For a while there, Grand Designs Australia struggled to get it right. Too many quality builds in trendy locations, not enough people literally and figuratively digging themselves into a hole.

So good news! The first episode of Grand Designs Australia season 12 features Matt and Kate. After being priced out of the housing market in Melbourne – and already alarm bells are ringing because if you’re priced out of an established home, you often don’t have the money to build a new one – they have decided to move to Tasmania and build not one but two earthships out of recycled bottles and rammed earth, or as the rest of us call it, dirt.

The couple are introduced. She’s an urban planner; he’s a software engineer. Together they have two children and a folk band. It’s obvious we’re in for a bit of a ride. Bad weather, delays, non-traditional building materials and the fact that ‘good intentions can’t shield the inexperienced from the curveballs that building your own home can throw at you’ all lead to problems that put the whole project in jeopardy.

The whole thing leads to host Professor Anthony Burke driving up a dirt road saying, ‘I’ve got to know: did the house beat them?’ No spoilers, but it’s safe to say he doesn’t arrive at a collection of gravestones.

Across the 10 episodes, a few themes emerge. The builders are often looking to leave a legacy, build a forever home, create something energy-conscious and environmentally-friendly. Some builds are big on ideas; others are just plain big. Everyone is hands on and determined to bring their vision to life.

Which is just want we want to see, and not just because the end results are often stunning. Hubris brought low is always satisfying to watch. As the inescapable realities of building bear down on these people – builds always take longer, cost more and throw up more problems than expected – these structural stories become human ones as well.

As our guide, Burke has a light touch. Not for him the arched eyebrow and barely concealed skepticism of UK host Kevin McCloud. He’s firmly on the builders’ side, even when the schemes are clearly a little too ambitious. He knows that the homes are the real stars here – especially when they’re built out of recycled plastic waste on farmland by unskilled family members.

Grand Designs Australia season 12 premieres 16 October on ABC TV and ABC iView.

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