Apologies for being slightly behind with this – so much to watch, so little time – but did anyone else catch the BBC’s big Christmas offering, The Girl Before?
What must be the world’s first prestige drama about proptech and lease terms. Sure, to pad it out to four episodes, there are a couple of tenants who look vaguely alike, the architect they find inexplicably compelling, and the slowly unfolding mystery of one of their deaths. But mainly it’s proptech and lease terms. Great performances from the two leads are overshadowed, as it’s the house that is the star – the strikingly minimalist One Folgate Street (an address in Shoreditch, but the exterior shots were in Bristol, and the interior was specially created in a warehouse). At its heart is a floating staircase that’s just asking for trouble, and everything from the shower to the temperature to the ambient music is controlled by a creepy AI named Housekeeper. Then there’s the lease itself, which, as well as standard prohibitions on smoking and pets, goes rather further, banning children and ruling out the ownership of any personal items that won’t fit in a tiny wardrobe. Oh, and the requirement every now and then to complete a 50-question survey on your evolving personality in order to turn the water back on. Everybody wants data from their properties these days… For some it may be a psychological thriller, for resi landlords it’s a mine of nightmarish, Black Mirror-esque ideas.
Star P&O-wer
While we’re talking high quality-yet-somewhat-unsettling visual media in the property field, praise must go to P&O Ferrymasters for its slick new short film about its formidable end-to-end logistics capability, launched this week at the increasingly inaccurately named Expo 2020 in Dubai. The impressive production shows in exquisitely shot detail how the company’s integrated rail, road and warehousing fulfilment services dovetail with “the unrivalled capability of parent company DP World” to provide smart logistics solutions enabling the flow of trade across the globe. Not usually the stuff of Hollywood, we’ll grant you, but wait until you watch it… and particularly its spellbinding narrator. With his piercing eyes and mesmeric Nordic tones, it’s impossible to defy being hooked by his first few words, perfectly timed and immaculately paused as the music swells behind him: “A… to B… has never been this easy.” Mads Mikkelsen has nothing on this guy. Forget the next Bond, he just has to be the next Bond villain. And, based on the warehouse setting they’ve filmed him in, he’s already got his own lair. Enjoy some cinematic shed porn, and fall under his spell at: https://www.poferrymasters.com/about-us#our-journey
WFZ
That’s not a typo, but the first use of what is sure to be the next buzz-initialism to hit the sector, once they all catch wind of it. What does it stand for, Diary hears you ask? Working from Zimbabwe. That’s what traditionally London-based chartered surveyor Hayley Bondi, pictured, has been doing for more than a year, and to prove exactly how great it has gone, she even switched companies. Late in 2020, Bondi visited her family for Christmas as a Knight Frank employee, only to remain trapped in Zimbabwe when it was added to the UK’s Red List. What better time to interview for and successfully secure a new job, “extreme remote working” at Waypoint Asset Management? By no means a straightforward process, it has involved Bondi investing in her own high-speed fibre-optic connection, customs impounding her new IT equipment for days, and the use of a generator (or a friend’s solar panels) during Zimbabwe’s frequent power cuts. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, though Bondi tells us she does plan to return to the UK in early 2022.
You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry
Whatever happened to Michael Gove over the course of Monday morning to fill him with fury? The day had started with his letter to resi developers, which, in short, said that they needed to stump up £4bn to fix the cladding crisis, or he’d be forced to use legislation. The matter may have been confrontational, but the tone was civil, collaborative, even ending with the phrase “with every good wish”. Aw, sweet. But then something happened. By the time Govey was in the Commons, he was practically declaring war on the property industry. “Unscrupulous” developers should beware: “We are coming for you,” he declared. “We will deploy heavier artillery to ensure we get the support we need to those on the front line,” he announced, stealing the PM’s Churchillian schtick. Now, some may say this is simply the difference between private business and public presentation. Or maybe that’s just what happens when the Govester gets stuck in a lift for half an hour at the BBC. Gove in an elevator, it’s the stuff of which songs should be written…
