Recommendations: Week of 6/3/24

I could totally sell luxury real estate in France!

Television is in a strange place right now; in some ways it seems to strive to be ignorable. There is a supposition built-in to some shows (or so it seems) that you will be second or even third screening while watching. Amazon especially wants you to be adding things to your cart almost absentmindedly, as evidenced by a recent commercial featuring a new dad who while watching The Boys on baby watch is also scrolling through espresso machines. The trick is most of those shows are not very good, because of course they’re not.

Good shows shouldn’t be second screened. They deserve our full attention, but sometimes I do genuinely want to pay minimal attention to something on the television. It’s just very relaxing to have half your brain on the telly, a quarter on your phone, and a quarter on the cat/human/dog curled up next to you. This is the role Law & Order: SVU used to play in many of our lives. Sometimes sports takes up this role, though we’re in hockey and basketball post-seasons and it’s high golf and tennis time too, so more attention is needed than in say, November. The answer is obviously reality television, and for me specifically, reality luxury real estate television.

It used to be dating shows for me, but those are just so stressful I can’t engage anymore. I’ve never been a Housewives person but Selling whatever is right in my bag. Beautiful houses in beautiful locales (don’t get stuck on the ones just in LA; the houses all look the same) with just enough drama and business sense sprinkled in to make you feel like your cortex is not totally asleep. Here are my favorites, all on Netflix:

The Parisian Agency: Exclusive Properties: Oh la la. First, the best of all. L’Agence follows the Kretz family of realtors as they navigate the French luxury real estate market. Father Olivier, mother Sandrine, grandmother Majo, and sons Valentin, Martin, Louis, and Raphael are a loveable bunch who rarely fight and seem to have totally conquered the market. They show their clients incredibly beautiful properties in Paris, the larger French countryside, and in various resort towns where French people like to go (St. Barth, Corsica, etc). The houses are incomparable in this series, the drama is low, and the whole experience is as soothing as you could possibly ask for.

Buying London: If you’ve seen Selling Sunset or Selling the OC, you know the play here. Cutthroat bitchy agents with lots of surgical enhancements selling eye-popping real estate at insane prices, occasionally to B or C-list celebrities. There’s even a Jason Oppenheim (Selling Sunset scion)-esque figure in Daniel Daggers, self-described Mr. Super Prime who prides himself on working his way up from humble beginnings to become THE name in British luxury real estate without losing his working class accent. The attraction here is the setting, which takes what made Sunset great and gives us more interesting real estate to look at. After all, there’s only so many infinity pools with a picture perfect view of the Hollywood Hills one girl can take.

Buying Beverly Hills: This is one of the most interesting of these shows right now not because of its real estate offerings but more because of the interconnected nature of reality television. This is the story of Mauricio Umansky, CEO of The Agency, and his real estate mogul daughters. Mauricio is the husband of Kyle Richards, one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills ladies and the whole family has been depicted on TV since 2010. Mauricio was also on Dancing with the Stars recently, but that’s less germane unless you’re a real completionist. The most recent season of Beverly Hills depicts the breakdown of Mauricio and Kyle’s relationship and provides a meta window into what it’s been like for this entire family to grow up in the spotlight. I love reality television that acknowledges the outside world like this, so it’s a real treat to experience the fourth wall breakage in the most recent season. The houses are fine.