Dermot Bannon’s Room to Improve isn’t the escapist fantasy it once was

Cut down to six episodes (Series 12 had eight if you include the two-parter about Bannon’s own home renovation), the current season hasn’t managed to garner the ratings glory of the old days.

Episode one saw a respectable average viewership of 536,200 viewers on RTÉ One and RTÉ One+1, beating both The Late Late Show and The Tommy Tiernan Show.

A week later, that number had dropped to 427,400 viewers on the same channels — a far cry from the roughly 722,000 viewers who tuned in to Daniel O’Donnell’s home renovation episode in 2018.

Viewers took to social media more than once during the broadcast of the current series. The numbers, it seems, are no longer correct.

Last weekend, Thurles couple Jim and Mary Moloney were told by a stunned Dermot that their $150,000 renovation budget was too small (“It’s very ignorant and condescending of Dermot to say ‘tiny budget’. They’ve probably been extremely tough for years worked for that save the money,” one Twitter user noted).

A week earlier, Hilary and Paul did particularly well updating a five bedroom home in Blessington Lakes. Her budget was a staggering €525,000 – a budget many viewers could only aim for to buy a house, let alone renovate it.

In the meantime, room for improvement has fallen into a worn pattern. Bannon offers homeowners advice and suggestions that may soon morph into full-blown flights of fancy. The people who actually have to live with his ideas day after day (and have to pay hard cash for them) entertain his little architectural details – here a zinc roof, there a green kitchen – with a wry smile until the “tension” is quickly dissipated and The project is completed.

Clients are also taken to a property that is a striking example of what they are trying to achieve. When architect and builder are on the same page stylistically, the only drama left to craft is whether the budget gets out of hand. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Regardless of the complications of the journey, the end results are always pleasantly shiny. The picture windows and glass rooms – a bannonism if there ever was one – are almost always present and correct. Ditto for the sleek dark paneled kitchen, marble countertops, huge kitchen island, mid-century furniture, low hanging lamps. Yes, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all – and we’ve seen 13 series’ worth so far.

Real estate pornography is practically a national pastime, but twitching the curtains to see into other houses and make you green with envy is a very different perspective now than it was in 2018.

At a time when Generation Rent can only despair at the impossibility of buying a property and most other people are feeling the current cost of living that is putting a serious damper on their bank accounts, room for improvement is not quite the nice escape experience it used to be.

Granted, there are other real estate shows that cater to the more modest home project, among others Ireland’s cheapest houses and home rescue.

room for improvement has always been on the more extravagant side of the scale, but we’ve kind of gotten to a point where it becomes a visual reminder of what most of us can never achieve.

Though every customer on the show is certainly personable, normal, and relatable, it’s still a sobering reminder of the vast divide between the haves and have-nots. And if you belong to the latter camp – a faction that is growing by the day – room to improve Stunning features can feel like an exercise in self-flagellation.

Your “if it ain’t broke” approach has obviously worked room for improvement team for years. But let’s be fair, “if it ain’t broke” should be approached with caution on a wind shift, especially when it comes to the housing market.

A word in your shell, Dermot – room for improvement is still a long way from getting completely out of hand, but next time let’s look at what magic you can achieve with a five-figure renovation budget that feels at least vaguely accessible to the majority of your viewers. That would really be showstopping stuff.