The Auction House – TV review

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/18/the-auction-house-tv-review

Version 0 of 1.

Lots Road in Chelsea is home to The Auction House (Channel 4). Happy coincidence, or is that how the street got it name? Answers BTL please … Oh, not necessary. [SPOILER ALERT] I took a sneaky peak at episode two (of three) and one auction house employee explains: Lots Road is in fact named after the allotments that used to be here, long before that auction house was even built. Like a pharmacy being built on the site of an old farm, on Farm Road … a bit.

Anyway, it's fairly standard behind-the-scenes fare. With plinky-plonky off-the-beat music and slightly arch narration from a familiar voice (Roger Allam here, though it's usually someone who used to be in Green Wing), to let you know that it's supposed to amuse as well as inform.

I've said it before: these things are only successful if they give you access to an extraordinary place, a glimpse into a world you're unlikely to come across in your own everyday life. Or if they have good stories or characters. On the first count, this doesn't really succeed. An auction house works as you'd imagine: people bring stuff to sell; buyers browse, maybe to buy, at the actual auction, admittedly a more exciting way of selling than, say, Argos, or Amazon. And because it's Chelsea, which is full of millionaires and eccentrics, some of the stuff is more amusing than you might find elsewhere: like the stools made of whale scrotums from Aristotle Onassis's yacht, and another couple of items I'll come to.

Plotwise: old brown furniture is out of fashion; Chelsea's shiny new residents like shiny newer things to put in their shiny new flats; the display areas are being rethought, etc.

What about personnel then? Well, manager Martin is affable, has a lovely relationship with his staff, is funny in a slightly sarcastic way and possibly isn't entirely fulfilled professionally, but then who is? I'd be happy for Martin to be my neighbour, or my friend, but he's not the larger-than-life character to take The Auction House above the mundane into must-watch territory.

Owner Roger is initially more promising. Of his own management style he says: "I would say it's antiquated, I would say it's dictatorial, I would say it's offensive to a lot of people." But I don't quite believe him as a true dictator. If he was really offensive would he admit to being so? Would his staff slag him off to camera if they were really so terrified of him? I think he's playing the pantomime villain, no doubt with the encouragement of the filmmakers, because he and they know that it is good for business (publicity) and for the programme. So, Rog, I'm sorry but you don't get the credit for rescuing The Auction House.

But rescued it is, and by personnel. Not staff though, but clients. Specifically by snobby married couple Michael and Craig who can barely move in their own home for the mess, sorry all the fine art and porcelain and, yes, unfashionable old brown furniture, and who will surely also star in a future Channel 4 show called Posh Clutter when it inevitably gets made (if it hasn't been already).

And by two fabulous identical blonde creatures called Sam and Lili, whose eyes are caught by a splendid three-foot bronze vagina, perfect for Lili's new seven-bedroom mansion, with a kitchen in "alpine surgical" style, so "if you were going to the mountains to have plastic surgery you would have it in this kitchen". (What is she talking about?)

Why would Lili, a songwriter and psychotherapist apparently, want a big golden vagina sculpture? "Because it looks like a big expensive piece of art, not because I think it's fantastic or evocative," she says honestly. "And I think it's kind of amusing; stick it in your bathroom. I mean I just think it's funny, oh my God."

OMG indeed. In the end Lili comes home without the golden vagina, sadly, but with a table covered in graffiti that she thinks will change the people in her home, make them happier, stop them making mistakes. "Everything can be art, nothing can be everything," says the table, all over its legs. Sam agrees it's fantastic.

I don't know much about graffiti tables but I'm not 100% convinced. I am by Lili and Sam though, and Michael and Craig. Saved. By posh Chelsea people, basically. They're always fascinating and entertaining, I'm afraid. Maybe not three episodes fascinating; better would have been a single, tighter one. Going, going, gone, gavel.