The Great House Revival

SBS, 7.30pm

The Irish answer to Grand Designs comes to its triumphant season end with a supersized project that should come with a warning for anyone who has ever struggled to regrout their bathroom. Garry and Anne, proud owners of a crumbling 16th-century tower house, sit somewhere on the spectrum between endearingly optimistic and clinically insane as they splash more than $8million on their faded symbol of medieval power. The common philosophy "I renovate, therefore I am" is intensified in their case by the psychic hangover of being forced by Ireland's economic woes to seek their fortunes across the water. "Our generation was denied an Irish life," says Garry as he decks out his baronial digs in crushed velvet couches and a golden tree on the roof.