Changing Rooms; Jay’s Yorkshire Workshop

“Just as Channel 4 retained the essence of The Great British Bake Off so it has repeated the trick with Changing Rooms. Strip the Nineties show back to its two key components and what did you have? Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and a pile of medium-density fibreboard. It’s still good fun, but feels generic. Changing Rooms spawned countless imitators, which means that nothing here seemed fresh.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“It is on Channel 4 rather than BBC2, but in all other respects Changing Rooms is unchanged. Two rooms, no budget, the new presenter is even called Anna Richardson, and Laurence L-B is back to give us the full nostalgia rush. For those not old enough for nostalgia, it’s hard to see the appeal of an unchanged Changing Rooms. Not only has design moved on but the bar has been raised.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“It’s good to have Changing Rooms back, and Llewelyn-Bowen is an excellent tonic, adept at faux self-deprecation and chiming well with the new presenter Anna Richardson.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“Welcome back to a great British institution. Changing Rooms is cheap, brassy and bonkers — like Rovers Return barmaid Bet Lynch with a paintbrush. Once a BBC mainstay, Changing Rooms has switched to Channel 4, where it is now ‘sponsored by Dulux’. This accounts for the cameraman’s new obsession with paint.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Was it always this tacky? The trouble is that the makeover genre has grown more ambitious since 2004. Compared with the excellent recent series of Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr, for example, this felt more like Come Dine with Me with paint and stencils – more teatime than primetime.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“There was always ample spin-off potential in The Repair Shop and, lo, here we have Jay’s Yorkshire Workshop. The difference is that it yanks on the heartstrings even more than The Repair Shop by making it less ‘this was my late dad’s beloved bicycle’ and more ‘this person gave half their liver away to a complete stranger, literally’. Which increases the emotional currency somewhat. It is Tears and Tissues Central.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“An hour of woodwork is, frankly, dull viewing. But the stories were heartwarming. A young man called Jack donated half his liver as a transplant for a stranger, Connor. Jack’s reward was a sideboard with sliding doors. Luckily, Connor fell in love with his donor and they’re now a couple. That’s better than a sideboard.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“Many of us may be feeling in need of a big warm hug after the past 18 months and Jay’s Yorkshire Workshop provided viewers with the biggest, warmest hug this side of suffocation, a paean to human kindness, generosity and resilience that couldn’t fail to lift the spirit.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i