James reviews 'Find it, Fix it, Flog it' and 'Open House: the great experiment'

Hello, I’m James Brook, and welcome to the third episode of ‘I Review Freeview.’

There is a short intro podcast, which you can listen to if you like. But really it’s straightforward: you suggest upcoming programs on Freeview and I review them. If no-one suggests anything, then I have a look and choose something myself.

Remember: send suggestions and comments to contact@ireviewfreeview.com or go to IReviewFreeview dot com.

In this episode I will be reviewing:

1. Find it, Fix it, Flog it on Channel 4

2. Open House: The Great Sex Experiment on E4

As per normal, I selected pretty much at random. Looks a bit lightweight, if truth be told: One for the recycling nerds and some confessional, revealing stories from people seemingly intent on embarrassing themselves.

By The way: the image associated with this episode comes from a free AI image generator with the following instruction:

a man and a woman embracing on a wonky table.

I’m moderately pleased with the result.

Before we start, here’s my usual warning: as this is going out after the programs have been broadcast, I’m not that fussy about spoilers.

So, here we go.

Find it, Fix it, Flog it (series 7 episode 28) on Channel 4, Wednesday March 13, 1:05pm

There now seems to be a small rash of programs involving sawing or cutting or wielding or grinding or sanding or nailing or screwing or painting or …. oh God, name me anything to do with DIY.

And they all have one aim in common: to make me, personally, feel bad about my handyman skillset. Or lack of. Giving me a hammer and a nail is fine. Giving me a hammer and a nail and a painting to hang is not fine. Once, when living above a naughty knicker shop, I managed to remove a whole brick from the outside wall when trying to hang a curtain rail. It bounced onto the pavement, thankfully without undue fuss or damage. No one was killed. But I did have visions of a headline: ‘peek-a-boo bra buyer’s bonce bashed by brick.’

Anyway, ‘find it, fix it, flog it!’ features two likely chaps called Henry and Simon. Both commentary and banter is constant, upbeat, chirpy and extremely tiresome. When I am the ruler of the universe I will ban banter in my presence.

Anyway, Henry and Simon find things in recycle centres, skips and house clearance reject piles, take them away to a skilled artisan in a shed stuffed with useful tools, outline what they want done and supposedly end up with something worth selling on.

It’s the ugly duckling story done with sandpaper, electric drills, angle grinders, a good deal of creative imagination and a few pencilled sketches.

In this episode: an old bookcase is tarted up with flowery wallpaper; a broken metal table base is mended with struts, sprayed pink and fitted with a new top; an ancient TV cabinet is turned into a kids disco unit; 2 sets of skis are bolted onto a metal frame and become a bench; an old bench is renewed and sprayed in rainbow colours; legless chairs are given web-bought legs; a tube filled with tubes within tubes are cut up and re-purposed into a kid’s funky shelving; and a tiny electric bike is turned into a tiny electric bike that actually runs, with enough power to show a grown man it was designed for tiny children.

Then a valuer comes round, points at the various items and says things like, “that’s worth £100” and “that’s worth 50 quid,” and “I’m sure the public would pay £150 for that.”

The money spent on things purchased is deducted and the original owners get the cash and everyone is happy happy happy.

(poof! Ha!)

To be kind, really, really kind, the financial logic is dubious in the extreme. Costs for time, transport and even skilled wages seem to be ignored, while the valuations are taken as equivalent to cash in hand.

Take, for instance, the titchy-tiny electric bike. It was found in the midlands, transported to Oxfordshire, cleaned up, rewired, oiled then fitted with a new battery. And what did they say the total cost for all this expertise, effort and spare parts? 15 quid: the cost of the battery! Apart from anything else, it was so underpowered an ant couldn’t get across the road on it. But it got a reluctant valuation of 50 quid. So on paper, there was a profit of 35 pounds!

Ha! Try selling that as a business plan for a bank loan.

But that is not the point. Showing the ‘profits’ is just TV being TV. Viewers like a bit of ker-ching in what is loosely a competition. The underlying message comes over strongly: we throw away too much stuff that could - with a bit of ingenuity and elbow grease - be recycled, reused, repurposed, even totally reinvented.

All things to be encouraged and I have to say, I preferred ‘find it, fix it, flog it’ to the stodgy sentimental reverence of ‘The Repair Shop,’ for the items in question come with no tedious, uninteresting and ultimately redundant back story, thank goodness.

There are no tearful Grannies or sepia photos in find it, fix it, flog it! It’s cheerful and skilled people doing what they’re good at.

‘Nuff said!

So: onward, upward!

Which brings me to:

Open House: The Great Sex Experiment (series 1, episode 2) on E4, Thursday March 14, 10:00pm

For a couple of months, my life overlapped that of Hitler, so I’m very much a baby boomer: I learnt about sex from boastful older boys who knew little, jokes I didn’t understand and books pinched from the local branch of W H Smith’s.

Not that satisfactory.

But then my raging hormones were sent further into the kingdom of confusion by my one and only school sex lesson, when the boys and girls were separated, marched giggling into adjacent classrooms with the blinds drawn and a teacher wearing brown suede shoes and a red face reluctantly mumbled, pointing at anatomical diagrams on a flip-chart. He used, I remember, a brown wooden school ruler to both point and flip over the pages, as if to even touch these drawings would be a mortal sin.

Possibly because of this: no, almost certainly because of this, I am now constantly amazed by people sharing personal, intimate stuff on public platforms. And ‘public’ now-a-days doesn’t mean two women in hairnets chatting over a fence; it means anyone in the world with a smartphone.

Which is why I watched ‘Open House: the great sex experiment’ with a curious mixture of boredom, prurient amazement and the constant feeling it’d much rather have a cup of tea and a bun.

The base idea is familiar: people who want to improve are guided and coached by an expert giving counselling, advice and instruction. We follow their progress, and after an hour we’re gratified if they’ve made it and sad if they haven’t.

‘Open House’ is somewhat more interesting because instead of the usual range of aspiring cooks, hoteliers and dog owners we have couples aiming to broaden their sex lives without damaging their relationship.

To this end, they are taken to a country retreat populated entirely by sexually adventurous, liberated and attractive 25 to 35 somethings lounging around a pool. Immediately one wonders how they were selected. Did they have to pass an exam in their willingness to expose body parts? Who knows.

In this episode the newbies are two married couples: Jon and Daniel, interested in group sex, and Jess and Mike wanting to explore threesomes.

They meet the expert, the comforting, red-haired Dr Lori who says things like ‘and what do you feel about her having sex with someone else?’ She also came up with a useful quick way of finding out if an issue is still an issue when she says (and here I paraphrase): ‘it’s not an issue any more if you don’t wish it never happened.’

I’m sure we all know what that means, but you have to move swiftly on before it dissolves into a word salad of double negatives.

The good doctor tells Jon and Daniel to go out, pair off with other people, take them to a private yurt, but not to have sex. Which, apart from the absolute unavailability of yurts in a 1960s rural village, does sound a lot like my early experiences with the opposite sex.

So off they go, gathering round the pool with the others as dusk falls and candles are lit.

Daniel soon finds herself in deep conversation with Lewis from Blackburn in ripped jeans while Jon dutifully chats to a girl from Belfast.

For Jess and Mike, Dr Lori, on finding out they are webcammers, performing to order on a pay-per-view basis, the instructions are different: go out there, and if anyone’s up for it, see what happens. I don’t think yurts are mentioned once.

Dutifully, they join a group talking about - you guessed it, sex.

As an aside, it’s undoubtedly the editing, but all anyone seems to talk about is sex. Well, it’s what the program is about, isn’t it? It’d be a bit of let down if they took out snaps of a beach holiday with the kids or talked about work or football or oh, I dunno, a nasty disease caught from scuba diving in Eastbourne.

Anyway, they take a shine to a toothsome lass called Precious. She goes back with them to their room and they start - as my Mum would put it - fooling around. Excitingly, everything goes black and white and slightly fuzzy, alerting the viewer it’s time to sit up and take notice.

So we get rustling sheets, a few grunts and groans and Jess’s worried voice hoping Mike doesn’t like Precious more than her.

In her yurt, although not progressing to the black and white stage, Daneil’s doing OK. Getting more and more fruity and putting the no sex rule under increasing strain.

In his yurt however, Jon keeps wondering what his wife is doing, loses concentration, gives the girl from Belfast a hug and calls it a night.

He sits on his sofa and broods, soon joined by Daniel, and they have one of those tired, circular, fractious conversations that go nowhere and leave endless, unspoken questions hanging like sour grapes in the air.

The second day dawns with the recurring motif of two swans simultaneously dipping their heads into a lake. I’m not sure what it symbolises exactly, but it seems appropriate.

There are more sessions with Dr Lori.

First up is Daneil and Jon. Issues and emotions are discussed, analysed, and dissected, ending with them deciding they’re not yet ready for whatever the retreat has to offer. They pack their bags and go home.

With Jess and Mike, however, it’s different. They’re come a long way, but Dr Lori decides they can go even further. They stay, and that night - again with Precious - the black and white gruntometer goes ding ding ding, much to the satisfaction of all concerned.

And that’s basically it. We do get a catchup: Daneil and Jon are still trying to broaden their horizons while Jess and Mike are really, really enjoying life.

For what it’s worth, I sort of liked watching it. But, on the whole, I’m not a fan of emotions displayed like gutted fish on a slab and there’s always the suspicion that observed behaviour can never be entirely natural. If the cameras were not there, would it all have happened as it did?

(Poof! ) Have I put it on series record? Nope.

And that concludes my reviews for this episode.

Don’t forget, contact me through the website Ireviewfreeview.com or email contact@ireviewfreeview.com.

Thank you for listening, and goodbye for now.