Send Nudes; Grand Designs

“Send Nudes takes all the latent prurience and voyeurism promised by the new software, strips it of the medical gloss Your Body Uncovered valiantly imposed and – the final flourish, the extra spray-cheese topping on your nacho cheddar – adds public opinion to the mix…I marvel, as I often do during body-image programmes, at the disparity on display between the sexes. The man wants an aesthetic tweak to give him an edge over people in an extremely niche profession. The woman wants hers because a perceived imperfection has put her so far outside of what she has been told is the only way to be attractive that she can no longer live her life with ease. Are there men out there in the equivalent situation? Do we just not hear from them? Or is endemic self-loathing the overwhelmingly female experience it seems to be? All these questions and more go unanswered by Send Nudes. You can gorge for ever without it doing you the slightest bit of good. Delicious, in its own soul‑rotting way.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“It is a show which takes the essence of Naked Attraction – entertainment for drunk viewers who tune in to squeal at people’s rude bits – and mashes it up with Embarrassing Bodies and cosmetic surgery makeover shows. If you giggle at those, you will giggle at this. But let’s not pretend there is any serious purpose to this programme whatsoever…At least Steph, the second contributor, genuinely hated her 34G boobs. Was there any reason she had to be fully naked for us to assess her breasts? No.But she was given helpful advice by a cosmetic surgeon and later had a reduction and uplift, professing herself thrilled with the results. The first person featured, though, showed up this programme for the pile of insincere, ratings-chasing trash it is. Steven, a 48-year-old carpenter, was worried that his penis was only “average” size. What do you know, he turned out to be a part-time porn star.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“In McCloud’s defence, misery and jeopardy make for a better show and this was a cracker. As Colin stood holding a single cupcake with a candle in it that McCloud had given him for his not very happy birthday and admitted, “We’ve come a cropper,” it would have taken a heart of reinforced concrete not to feel pity. Here was a resolutely positive “can-do” chap with a very understanding wife who didn’t even kick off when he objected to a “poxy” support column…But look what the power of positive thinking and a lot more money delivers. The project was eventually finished — and it was stunning.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“McCloud loved the finished product, although I wonder if the neighbours feel the same. They’re probably less enamoured after watching this programme, in which McCloud dismissed their homes in the upmarket suburb of Hale as a mix of “Tudorbethan, mock-Georgian, fakery and footballer glitz”. And he summed up Colin’s situation with barely concealed glee: “Either he’s going to produce something fabulous without compromise and have a miserable bank balance, or he’s going to compromise and just be miserable.” Which is Grand Designs in a nutshell.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph 

“The house, admittedly, looked beautiful in the end, if a little unlived in. Designed in the imposing style of a lot of super-contemporary hotels, it was defined by rounded timber and glass walls, and featured four en suite bedrooms, a cinema room, a games room and bar, as well as all of the usual living areas. McCloud, waxing typically poetic, described it as “a timber Scandinavian spaceship” and “a karmic, curvy oasis; a floating arc of sustenance and respite”, and seemed genuinely awed by the end product, though he was quick to inquire about the home’s financing. The £1.7m the couple had spent on it, McCloud said, was a good deal considering the finish achieved, though the clearly eye-watering 20-year mortgage on it was certainly a reality check. It was, in the end, a vintage episode of the show, and proved once again that maybe more than any other programme on TV, you can map the entirety of human existence onto Grand Designs. Failure, loss, success, euphoria, and the wonder inherent in having created something truly lasting: they are all here, navigated for us by McCloud in his hi-vis jacket. What fun to have it back.”
Lauren O’Neill The i