Kevin McCloud’s Manmade Home

Series two, episode one
He’s ‘finding refuge from twenty-first century Britain’. He’s yearning for ‘a more creative life’. He’s ‘searching for a little slice of happiness’. Oh dear. It sounds like poor Kevin McCloud is in the midst of some sort of profound spiritual crisis. In fact, we’d probably be slightly worried about him if he didn’t have some good, loyal friends at Channel 4 who were prepared to pay for him to stick his garden shed on a truck, lug it down to the seaside, stick it on the edge of a cliff and find some repurposed scrap to tart it up a bit.

Not a million miles away from being a smug middle-class escape fantasy, this new series bears the authentic ring of pointlessness. Sure, he’s ingenious – using fish oil for burning and animal innards for boat buoyancy – but, for the most part, the project seems to take the form of ostentatiously doing everything in the most difficult way possible. So finally, it just feels self-indulgent – it’s hard to see what’s in it for the rest of us.