The Apartment

I find the head judge extremely rude and a narcissist.

It's quite alright for him to voice his honest (most times insulting) feedback to the contestants but dare any of the guest judges and he's all over them.

The producers should be ashamed to allow this!!!

I think the show has an interesting concept with having people who aren't interior designers design rooms but the main judge ruins this show. He is extremely arrogant and rude. He may as well be the only judge because he makes it seem as if his opinion is the only one and he has the final say. He talks over everyone very loudly and a lot of the sexual jokes just weren't needed on what's supposed to be a design show. He seems a bit biased as well. Saying someone's design was too perfect (umm what?) and splitting up prizes. The show also seems to focus more on finding a winner with the best sob story instead of who had the best designs.

Just watched a few episodes on Netflix, not sure what season. It has every reality TV trope going for it: sob stories, deceptive judges, narcissism from the judges, playing with people's lives.

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen was last relevant in the 1990s, but somehow has convinced the Americans that he's the Simon Cowell of interior design.

The bit that has made me turn off is yet another "GOTCHA VIEWERS" moments that play with the contestants. Like rewarding prizes to one set of contestants then going... actually, no, you're not going to get all the prizes. Then they say to one set of contestants "You're going home (long pause). But but not this week". It's a massive two fingers up to the other two kids standing there who put their heart and soul into a design, thought they'd got through... but no, you were just used by the judges for a prank.

Disgusting.

And as an interior design show it just fails to really do the work much justice, there's so much padding and pontificating it doesn't really work on any level.

This show is all over the place, it's obviously just some rich people decided to host a show and make it sort of about design. There is so much drama (especially in the celebrity edition) which was kind of enjoyable to watch. The celebrity designs were mostly okay,some were actually beautiful, but the normal person season had really bad designs! I don't think any of those people had ever done it before. The layout of the episodes is okay, but they spend to much time on judging and didn't really show the rooms. Just kind of blah.

Like another reviewer, I went into this series hoping to get some inspiration for some design I have to do in my own house. Now, granted, design is highly subjective and I am not an expert. But with a few exceptions I thought that the designs were pretty ugly. There are also some really sketchy/dangerous shortcuts taken at times, and in one episode a huge wooden beam falls from the ceiling. There are two experts who seem to actually know what they're talking about: judge Jamie and a guest handyman called Darren. But we don't actually see how any of the work is actually accomplished.

The real turn-off, though, was the constant sexual banter/harassment from the male judges toward the female contestants and even the female guest judges. "I've always wanted to rub off on you" the lead judge leers at one young woman who laughs nervously. In another episode, Jamie lifts up a woman's leg (she is wearing a dress) and holds her leg in the air as he uses the heel of her shoe to make a point about the spacing of boards or something. Again, the woman in question is giving off major "uncomfortable but can't complain" vibes. It's icky to watch and it is *constant*.

In the season that I watched (season 2, I believe, the season on Netflix) I didn't actively dislike the contestants, but I didn't really like any of them either. It's kind of annoying how many of them are like *shrug* "We just don't know about interior design!". But you are on an interior design show!! One partnership gets assigned a room based on an artist and doesn't even bother to google the artist in question! It's hard to root for anyone, and I ended up just sort of hate-watching the series to its conclusion.

This series also indulges in the most stereotypical of "reality" elements: obviously staged sequences, drawn out and manipulative eliminations ("Susan, say goodbye . . . to Dave . . . because he's going home . . . eventually . . . but tonight you are going . . . back to your room because you've impressed me enough to last another week!"), choppy editing, etc. I love the concept of the show, but the execution is pretty bleak.