Chip and Joanna Gaines headline the newly launched streaming service Discovery +, which will host the revamped ‘Fixer Upper’, along with a wide variety of non-fictional and unwritten programming.
2021 began with a postponement of hope, the usual optimism about the beginning of a new year muffled by the gloomy reality that all the biggest crises of 2020 will remain with us for a while longer.
The continuous quarantine, combined with the cold of winter, probably makes the launch of Discovery + on January 4 one of the most opportune debuts of a streaming service. Aspiring and full of renovations, with an unmistakable focus on home renovation (at a time when the luckiest of us are forced to stay home as much as possible), the service promotes the most attractive fantasies for us in the midst of the pandemic: easy transformations, uncomplicated domesticity and (oof) housing stability.
Naturally, the faces that represent Discovery + are those of Chip and Joanna Gaines, whose popular HGTV series Top fastener, which ended its five-season season in 2018, will embark on a new iteration – subtitled Welcome home – in service from January 29th.
Discovery + has a natural niche within the streaming wars: improvised and non-fiction programming. Netflix has had some revolutionary reality hits, like Love is blind and Selling Sunset, especially in the past year, but streamers have ignored or neglected improvised series. By bringing programs from HGTV, TLC, Food Network, Animal Planet, ID, OWN and Discovery Channel under one roof, the service will offer more than 2,500 series (totaling 55,000 episodes), in addition to the original programming, rivaling the Disney + catalog in both its predictable (or comforting) vastness and mediocrity.
Access to Gaineses (who appear in several programs besides the next Top fastener season), original Groom 90 days specials, documentaries about the nature of the BBC as Planet Earth, Blue planet and the new five-part narrated by David Attenborough A perfect planet – as well as selected programming from Lifetime, A&E and The History Channel – will cost viewers $ 4.99 a month (or $ 6.99 a month without ads), although some Verizon customers can enjoy 12 months for free.
Discovery + did not distribute press screens for the new Top fastener critics, but they provided several episodes of Magnolia table, a half-hour cooking program with Joanna, and Courage to run, an hour-long doctor crossing Chip’s four-month training to complete a marathon with the cancer journeys of his inspiration and occasional trainer, professional runner Gabe Grunewald. Joanna’s focus on “simple meals that bring people together,” like fettuccine alfredo or her grandfather’s fatayer (Lebanese meat pies), along with her stripped demeanor and her beautiful rustic kitchen set for wealthy people, is probably a phlegm for mom’s relationship fans. But nothing here is casual Top fastener viewers (like me) there are many reasons to tune into a 30-minute tutorial for familiar dishes that we can probably scan in two minutes online.
Courage to run it is more engaging, but it has less to do with Chip’s reckless feat than Grunewald’s distressing cancer crises, which began at age 20 and somehow did not interfere with his athletic ambitions.
The most interesting narrative here is the Gaines’ evolution from basic cable hosts to emerging media moguls. Discovery + is a kind of launch pad for the Magnolia Network, which will replace HGTV’s DIY Network spin-off later this year. So far, Magnolia Network’s offerings, many of which will debut on Discovery +, need personalities who can jump off the screen, or at least not disappear on the wallpaper. The newbie enters Fixer for the first time, in which the Gaines appear briefly, carry out an impressive renovation of the condominium. But there is something depressing capitalist at an advanced stage about the millennium generation using fashion materials and Instagram accessories to help raise prices in a real estate market (Salt Lake City) that Redfin already describes as “very competitive”. Other offers are less alarming (or, depending on your taste, escapists), but surprisingly niche, with programs dedicated to creating interior designer profiles (Point of view) or transforming gardens (House made) and backyards (Super Dad)
In addition to proposing bottom drawer ideas for HGTV and Groom 90 days franchise expansions, Discovery + has promoted itself strongly as a new destination for real crimes. The most striking original in this line is the feature film JonBonet Ramsey: What really happened?, a completely pedestrian (that is, unnecessarily horrible) revisit of the 1996 case. But the most promising true crime program on the streamer is Onision: in real life, a three-part document with Chris Hansen (from To catch a predator fame) about the titular vlogger, whom another creator calls “R. Kelly from YouTube”. Despite the occasional sensationalism, the first chapter, at least, suggests a series that will explore how relatively new and poorly regulated platforms like YouTube and social media, together with the intimate microcelebrity they generate, can allow sexual exploitation of minors. Of all the programming I tried at Discovery +, it was the only thing that seemed to understand that the audience may want something they have never seen a thousand times before.