John Rumm wrote in message ...
Suz wrote:

This was how they sold it, but from a few programmes in it was obvious that they are doing all the houses in parallel, presumbly
because of time constraints. Looks like it was done all last winter, there have been no summer shots. Damn I was looking forward
to seeing your typical builder topless and showing some "cleavage".

This is probably one of the best explanations when you think about it....

The production team would have set up parallel builds in order to bring
the show in in a reasonable time frame - and use a solid block of the
presenters and productions staffs time. This leaves the problem of
needing to predict in advance what the profit from each build will be,
in order to set the appropriate financial "entry point" on supposedly
subsequent builds.

The moment one of the builds actually returns significantly less profit
than anticipated (and this had happened twice big time so far), the
whole house of cards falls down, and it becomes impossible to maintain
the illusion that the builds were done in strict sequence.

But you do have to wonder why they didn't try to rebrand the series
with a different theme - did they think viewers wouldn't notice the
maths didn't add up or something? Maybe they had too much film in the
can where the 'boys' were referring to the 'experiment' to be able to
eradicate it.

It's also a bit puzzling about the departure of Nigel the Property
Developer. If the builds were in parallel, you'd expect him to have
been involved in all of them, wouldn't you; however he left after
build 3 or 4 in the sequence. My guess is he was only contracted to
do the small houses, and that the departure was planned all along, and
nothing to do with the primadonna antics of the boys.

Assuming the builds *were* parallel, and Nigel was meant to be
involved in all of them, I would think the producers would have had
him firmly tied in contractually, as otherwise disappearing midway
through a production shoot like this would have totally destroyed the
illusion of continuity.

Plausible?

David