After two series of Banjo Beale, blagging his interior design wares across the Hebrides. Here he is, now together with his long suffering husband Ro, taking on rejuvenating an abandoned hotel on the Isle of Ulva. It's a hugely ambitious project, very carefully structured and edited here in a reality documentary format, with it's necessary peak dramas and crisis points. The weekly decorating of different rooms, ignores the primary necessity of stopping the roof leaking, getting the water, electric and heating to work, and replacing the windows. This only makes sense from the perspective of a makeover renovation programme. This is not how you would start a project of this scale. But that wouldn't make for such watchable television
What makes this programme essential viewing and so deeply lovable, is Banjo and Ro's relationship. Banjo the perpetually inspired designer, with an irrepressible urge to buy that rather too expensive piece of tat he sees some potential in, whilst Ro, yet again, points out the essential impracticality of his whole approach. As a period enamel bath appears over the horizon dramatically flown in under a helicopter. Ro has repeatedly to row back on his sensible doubts, when the room is finally and triumphantly finished. Undoubtedly this project will not have been straightforward, not just financially, but emotionally. But the cheque from the Beeb will help. This project is very far from finished, so there is at least another series in this. I certainly hope so, because this one was hugely enjoyable. The landscape of the islands is so ravishingly beautiful as a backdrop to their renovation shenanigans..
CARROT REVIEW - 7/8
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