HOMESTEAD RESCUE
Series return ★★★½
Wednesday 8.30pm, Discovery

Never heard of Homestead Rescue? Never mind. Season two opens with the perfect primer. Alaskan family Marty, Misty and Matt Raney spend their days helping "homesteaders" – kind of like Doomsday Preppers, only not insane – make a go of their deep-rural, semi-off-grid lifestyles. In this special, we revisit the most memorable rescues from season one, and it's both an entertaining showreel, and a great grab bag of tips, tricks and builds – some of which absolutely have applications in rural or even suburban Australia. A lot of the projects, for instance, involve minimising electricity use and/or generating your own. In Nevada they use a geothermal system for heating and cooling a shipping container home. In Oregon, we learn how to create a DIY hydro system. The dog-powered electricity in Alaska is probably less applicable here but anyone with solar panels can learn from the project in Colorado. Other jobs include constructing a "tiny house" from salvage, using ancient Native American techniques in modern horticulture, and creating a blacksmith's forge from found objects. The smooth-cheeked, clear-eyed, white-toothed Raney family could not be more wholesome and there's something extremely satisfying about seeing builds that are both humble and transformative rather than simply exercises in sleek, expensive design.