A show about small things holds a big place in Tara Ward’s heart.
The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge has been my winter TV pleasure. Every week for the past two months, I’ve watched a group of British amateur crafters gather together to design and furnish their fantasy home. They’ve transformed soulless empty boxes into rooms rich with historical detail and unique character, but not in the way you might expect, because everything on this show – from the fireplaces to the food to the furnishings – is in miniature form.
The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge has made dollhouses cool again, and Barbie’s Dreamhouse must be spewing with envy.
Hosted by Sandi Toksvig (QI, The Great British Bake Off), TGBTDC proves big things come in small packages. Each week, talented crafters display their skill and ingenuity by renovating a room with furniture and accessories, most no bigger than a thimble. They make wee cigars to be smoked while enjoying a mini bath, tiny cakes to be eaten at a little dinner party – from the furnishings to the floors, everything is delicate and detailed. At the end of each episode, the winning team’s room is added to the mini-mansion, and someone on the losing team is sent home. Their dreams are left in tiny tatters, and we all feel terrible about it.
That’s because The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge is a house of joy. It may be small on scale, but this show has a huge heart. Much like The Great British Bake Off (and almost every other show with “Great British” in the title) TGBTDC is about creativity and imagination and the quiet delight of watching nice people do something they love. This is charming, gentle television. It’s like being covered in the warmth of thousands of teeny weeny handcrafted blankets, each one more intricate than the next.
Snuggle down, because tiny shit’s about to get real. In tonight’s season finale, we’ll find out whether Sharon, a computer analyst from Wales, or Yorkshire heavy metal fan Dom will be crowned the tiny design champion and no doubt awarded a tiny trophy for an even tinier mantlepiece. These two crafters have impressed from the start – their incredible attention to detail and practical skills helped create Edwardian games rooms, Elizabethan bedrooms and Georgian kitchens, each stuffed with miniature objects of wonder. They even whipped up art deco bathrooms, complete with running water. A little stream of water came out of a little tap, and I cheered like we had just struck gold.
The finished rooms are judged by Dr Willard Wigan – an astonishingly talented micro-artist who holds the world record for the smallest sculpture ever made by a human hand – and interior designer Laura Jackson. The power of technology means viewers get to see the finished rooms up close too, as Sandi takes one for the team and is shrunken to Borrower size. She roams around the mini mansion as if it was normal-sized and pulls us close to savour every delicious detail, from the glass of red wine spilled on the floor in the games room to the petite potatoes being peeled in the Regency-style kitchen. She also chucks in some cheeky British humour: “Overnight, Dom’s wood has kept him awake” is a double entendre that Bake Off would be proud of.
The overwhelming vibe of TGTDC is warm and wholesome, but for a show about a dollhouse, there are plenty of tense moments. The contestants have to sweat the small stuff, and while nobody ever loses their shit, you can feel the strain through the constant politeness. The glue won’t stick, the paintwork looks sloppy, the ice sculpture doesn’t vibe like two swans kissing, and don’t get me started on the anxiety of Nadia’s house plants being placed on the floor. Edwardians loved their plant stands! Nadia couldn’t hear our little screams, and she was eliminated from the competition. Tiny daggers through our tiny hearts.
The Great Tiny Design Challenge shouldn’t work. It should scream B-O-R-I-N-G in microscopic handmade letters, but instead it’s been a beam of sunshine during a long winter, an uplifting escape into a world filled with wholesome and creative things. TGTDC isn’t going to fix the weather or stop inflation or change any of the terrible things going on around us. It simply transports us to another place for an hour every week, a magical world filled with miniature treasures. It asks nothing of us than to wonder and marvel, and I’ll miss it when it’s over.
The final of The Great Tiny Design Challenge screens on Friday 19 August at 8.30pm on TVNZ 1 and the whole series is available to stream on TVNZ+.