‘Dreamy tiny houses’: the hovel you wanted | TV

This is really making a virtue of necessity. In the program Dream Tiny Houses (Tiny House Nation)At Netflix, two specialists help couples and families in the United States to set up homes in spaces that do not exceed 46 square meters (500 square feet), and that are often mounted on wheels in case they have to move.

Such a program, which glamorizes the move to a minimal space, would have been more exotic before the crisis of 2008. It premiered in 2014, when it was much more timely. Those who have lost their home because of not being able to pay for it, or because of a divorce, come to him. But there is more, a whole movement of activists for the micro-home that links with ideas in vogue: sustainable, degrowth, minimalism. Some participants in the series had donated their home to a shelter to cure addictions, all out of altruism; Others set up the tiny house on a large estate, which is the height of militancy. They want to live better with less, a philosophy that links to another program on the platform, the one in which Marie Kondo urges you to get rid of what you don’t need.

Host John Weisbarth and handyman Zack Griffin pull wits to please everyone. A grand piano for one, a treadmill for another, a wet bar for two, a children’s play hall. They do not haggle with the kitchen, which has everything and is attached to a decent living room. The trick is usually to raise the beds to lofts where you can barely fit on all fours. They leave no unused space for drawers or folding furniture. And in some cases, they cheat on the outside – a tiny house with a porch, barbecue, and glassed-in dining room outside isn’t so mini.

His is a social work, okay. But the desire to cover precariousness with charm, like the mania of calling coliving to what it was to share a flat, or coworking to rent a space in an office. Of course, it can always be worse: whoever follows the account of El Zulista’s Twitter you will see the unworthy hovels, these yes, where the outcasts live badly.

You can follow EL PAÍS TELEVISIÓN on Twitter or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.