I hate almost everything about Buying London, the British version of Netflix’s highly successful Selling Sunset, in which grotesquely wealthy people buy property in Los Angeles from glamorous real estate agents whose personalities are plucked from the reality TV presets menu. I hate that it bases all of its dramatic tension on pitting women against each other. I hate that it makes Richard Curtis’s film Notting Hill look like a gritty documentary about the mean streets of London. I hate its England-for-dummies shtick that is clearly pitched at an international market. I hate its reverence for billionaires and bad taste, its celebrity name-dropping without actual celebrities, even the lurching drone footage that seems to have been shot by the Red Arrows.
Which is weird, because I didn’t hate Selling Sunset at all. This is making me reconsider now, but it didn’t feel so bad to watch Selling Sunset’s fantasy Hollywood illusions of grandeur at a safe distance of 5,000 miles or so, its millionaires and billionaires so removed it might as well have been a cartoon. I saw Selling Sunset as quaffable junk, the sort of telly that passes the time pleasantly. It is hard to feel the same about Buying London, because it is boring and infuriating, and neither are the garnishes I like on my trash.
