Boxing Clever: the last thing you want Dermot Bannon doing on a Sunday evening; and A Perfect Crime

Dermot Bannon's Incredible Homes — in Canada

Three minutes into the first episode of the new series of Dermot Bannon’s Incredible Homes (RTÉ One, Sunday 9:30 pm and RTÉ Player) and we still haven’t looked at a house. Instead, he’s visiting the mayor of Lunenburg in Nova Scotia, Canada. I’ve nothing against the mayor of Lunenburg, she seems like a very nice person. The problem is, Dermot has nothing against her either. They get along famously, which is the last thing you want to see Dermot Bannon doing on a Sunday evening.

Dermot Bannon checks out some Incredible Homes in Canada

Dermot Bannon isn’t really about glass boxes anymore, or visiting an amazing house in Wicklow to show the people doing up their house on Room To Improve something they’ll never be able to afford. Dermot Bannon should only be on our screens when he is trying to get his own way. That’s when he’s funny

Dermot Bannon is impressed by Incredible Homes in Canada

On this show, he’s tediously agreeable. There’s no story, no endpoint, just him

There’s no shortage of people who can travel around to exotic locations and say ‘wow is all I can say’. W e need Dermot ‘Bovver’ Bannon back at home, for the serious work of putting the boot in when people do daft things with buildings.

I had high hopes that Bovver would make an appearance on his way around an ‘incredible home’, built by a local architect in Nova Scotia. This one had an outdoor hall-way, so you had to walk around the outside of the gaff to get from the living area to the bedroom . (In Nova Scotia. Baltic. ) Pop quiz — how would Dermot react if someone said they wanted this in their house on Room to Improve?

Would he say,

A: ‘You’re crazy and I’m going to have a side-bar conversation with your husband to try and get him to talk you out of it?’

or

B: ‘Wow.’

The Incredible Homes version of Dermot Bannon went for answer B.

I worry that he was star-struck by the Canadian architect. The whole point of Room to Improve Dermot is that he must always be right. Incredible Home Dermot takes this away from him — it’s like he’s chipping away at his own statue. Someone should make it stop.

I liked the first episode of  A Perfect Crime on Netflix. The story of the assassination of Detlev Karsten Rohwedder in Düsseldorf in 1991 has a lot going for it. 

A Perfect Crime, Netflix series

The politician tasked with managing a part of East Germany’s transition to a market economy after re-unification was shot by a sniper as he stood in his living room. 

Suspects included the Stasi, the Red Army Faction and agents from the West German Deep-State ( if conspiracy is your thing. ) A Perfect Crime is chock-a-block with intrigue and footage of diabolical hair-cuts in 1990s East Germany. I’m looking forward to the rest of it.