Grand Designs, one of the few shows about houses that is worth watching, is finally airing another season after being derailed a bit by the pandemic.

The first episode this year features a great looking conversion of a cemetery gate-keeper’s building into a beautiful blend of old and new, in downtown London:

It’s such a far cry from what one finds on HGTV. And I’m not besmirching those on a budget. Few could afford the house featured in this episode of Grand Designs. The client happens to be a descendant of Scottish royalty (the BBC did a show on his cousin, who would be Queen of Scotland if the war in 1745 had gone the other way.) Still, the client had to take out huge mortgages to pay for it.

But HGTV has its “mansion” shows, the latest of which is Self Made Mansions, which attempts to champion the entrepreneurs who have “made it”, so to speak. And of course there is My Lottery Dream Home, which continues to slide down the price structure as finding big lottery winners to come on the show gets harder.

But the real value of Grand Designs is not the cost of houses, but the intent. The houses featured are built with purposes other than just to feed egos (though the current episode’s house is fabulously decorated inside, in a style that is so much more sophisticated than what one finds on HGTV shows.)

And that is one of the real weaknesses of the HGTV shows intended to sell the audience of the idea of how the rich live: nearly all the houses shown are pretty mundane. By which I mean unimaginative, without meaning other than to generate commissions for real estate sales folk.