Beeny’s family life is so charming and disarming that this low-key show about building a low-carbon home is surprisingly lovable. Admit it … you love her too
On the surface, the question of whether you will like Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country – the second series of a show about Sarah Beeny’s new life, which is in the country – will depend on whether you like Sarah Beeny, and want her to have a nice life. It feels as if culture has been sharpening like a sword for years up to this point, but I’m going to ask anyway: do you? Do you like Sarah Beeny? And, more importantly, do you want her to thrive in her new life in the country?
To figure out whether you like Sarah Beeny it does help to interrogate whether you’ve watched a property show in the last 20 years, because if you have, you probably do. Property TV is a natural fit for a country obsessed with property ownership, and Channel 4 has long since cornered the market, their four horsemen – Conquest (Kevin McCloud), Famine (Beeny), War (Phil Spencer) and Death (Kirstie Allsopp) – leading the march. What is it about owning a property that makes it so soothing to watch other people do things to theirs? Realistically, I’m 20 years and a global banking crisis from finding out for myself, but we live in hope.
