Changing Rooms

For all the craze the American remake of this series, 'Trading Spaces,' has started for DIY/makeover shows, it's not hard to see the original series is still the best. 'Changing Rooms' is as much about entertaining audiences as it is educating them on how to improve the style of their homes. All the devices for building suspense and encouraging disagreements and tensions amongst the DIY teams may make this show the bane of professional interior decorators, but... well, who cares? As an entertainment show, 'Changing Rooms' is surprisingly competent. While TLC's Paige Davis is annoyingly perky and largely hands-off when it comes to actually helping with any work, Carole Smilie is a playful, charming workaholic who, refreshingly, doesn't love everything the designers come up with. As for the designers themselves, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen stands out as a sort of larger than life, flamboyant-Hugh Grant character whose British eccentricity and humor is infectious. Like 'Trading Spaces,' this show has its reliably conservative, outrageous and annoying designers, but the program is far less reticent about editing out conflicts and (call it sensationalism, but it's still fun) between the team members and the designers. The British carpenter, Andy Kane is also far more entertaining than any of the Americans: he's funny, critical and brazen. Some will complain how 'Changing Rooms' is shorter and less detailed than its American counterpart. These people do not realize that in the UK, this show is not interrupted by BBC America's long commercial breaks, and thus the imported version has been heavily edited for time. I find the pacing and running time for the BBC America version to be an actual bonus - at an hour, 'Trading Spaces' can sometimes overstay its welcome. The American show plays around with more money and is more slickly produced, but has less charm and less (IMO) entertainment value than the British original. Give it a try.

I absolutely love Changing Rooms on the BBC America. Hilarious, fast paced, yet you learn something. Much better than the American knock off version, Trading Spaces, which is twice as long (1 hour) and slowly paced. Plus I'd rather watch Handy Andy Kane over Ty Pennington anytime! Andy can build me furniture!

This is one of the first shows that I had the pleasure of watching on the BBCAmerica channel. I love this show and although the designers don't always have an eye for taste--it does show what we can do in a pinch. Sometimes, the designers forget that people have to live in these rooms that they decorate and come up with some of the wildest rooms ever designed, but they do come out with more better ideas than bad ones. And sometimes, the hostess comes off sounding as if she is a tad better than the people whose rooms they are decorating--but just sometimes!!

...while the Brits may come up with the initial idea we Americans can improve it. Recently watching the "Changing Rooms' for the first time one word kept coming to mind bland. This show has no personality and is inferior to "Trading Spaces".

A fascinating example of a show that was a massive hit for the BBC, that they used in the schedules to defeat all opposition, before bleeding the format dry and then axing it when people got sick to death of it.