It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment in Buying London that well and truly turned my stomach. After all, there were so many potential contenders from the first episode of Netflix’s new property series slash love letter to unfettered greed. There was the scene in which Daniel Daggers, founder of the show’s central luxury estate agency DDRE Global, declares that “there’s no ‘I’ in team… but there is an ‘I’ in super-prime”, like high-end property’s answer to David Brent. Or perhaps our introduction to Oli, an agent who dresses like he is constantly on the verge of being summoned to attend a shooting weekend. “Us poshos stick together!” he declares of his wealthy clientele. On reflection, though, the most sickening scene occurs in the agency’s group meeting, when it’s announced that a £25m property has officially been sold, and everyone starts squealing in glee.
It sums up everything that’s grotesque about this nightmare fusion of Selling Sunset and Made in Chelsea (inevitably one of DDRE’s agents, Rosi Walden, had a brief stint on the latter show before pivoting to property). The programme is a celebration of pure acquisitiveness that venerates lavish displays of wealth for wealth’s sake, with precisely zero self-awareness. I kept expecting to hear a breathy cover version of “Opportunities” by the Pet Shop Boys playing in the background, the “let’s make lots of money” refrain stripped of all the irony. In a zero-star review, The Guardian described it as “probably the most hateable TV show ever made” (for context: even the outrageously awful 2019 film adaptation of Cats managed to drum up one measly star from the paper).
