Without Charlie, Selling Houses Australia doesn’t work
After 12 incredible seasons, one of the most underrated home renovation shows is set to change forever. And try as they might, SHA will never be the same, writes Cameron Adams.
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For fans of Selling Houses Australia, it’s like the Beatles breaking up.
Landscaper Charlie Albone is leaving the reality show – the most successful locally-made program in Australian pay-TV history.
Albone’s been there since day one in 2008. Those years were formative – the first series saw host Andrew Winter still finding his feet on Australian telly, while Shaynna Blaze and Albone were deer-in-the-headlights TV newcomers.
It took a few years for the chemistry to really kick in, when you could literally watch friendships form on air.
For a few seasons SHA was the best kept secret on Foxtel – with Winter and Albone’s repartee a delightful pantomime mix of Are You Being Served and The Two Ronnies, and Blaze playing off both of them while fluffing cushions and wielding paintbrushes.
Houses were also renovated, but as fans of the show soon realised, you were watching for much more than the before and after. It was Winter’s salty comments about the dire state of the houses and his impressive ability to shirk off anything resembling hard work. And Albone and Blaze’s willingness to call him out on it on camera.
It was around 2010 that the word of mouth really kicked in and the show became Foxtel’s jewel in the crown.
Even then, during the Sgt Peppers years, there were solo careers that didn’t split the band.
By 2012, Blaze had been tapped to be a judge on The Block – she’s done double duty on both shows ever since (as well as other TV projects and her own successful interior design business), while Albone’s garden knowledge saw him host a swag of Foxtel shows, including a series from the Chelsea Flower Show, where he entered his own landscape design – and won. Twice.
In 2017, Winter co-hosted another TV franchise, Love It Or List It, with another Block alumni, Neale Whitaker. Winter was nominated for a Gold Logie in 2018, which was the first time a Foxtel personality was nominated in the category.
Albone, Winter and Blaze are genuine friends when the cameras aren’t filming. That crucial fact cannot be said for all TV shows. Chemistry is impossible to manufacture but impossible to ignore, and it leaps out each time you watch the trio on SHA. They clearly love working together. It’s why they’ve all juggled what is no doubt a gruelling job – trekking around to busted-arse homes all across Australia and actually doing the hard work of renovation yourself – for 12 seasons now.
But now we know that Albone will be seen in this year’s season 13, then no more. The Yoko Ono in this split – Channel 7’s Better Homes and Gardens – will be his new job.
“I have loved being part of Selling Houses Australia and am incredibly grateful for everything the show has done for me,” Albone said in a statement.
“However I have an opportunity I cannot turn down and will allow me to spend more time with my family. So it’s with a heavy heart I hand the gardening shears to someone new but wish them, and the show, all the best moving forward.”
You can’t begrudge him a bit of stability with a young family, but selfishly, breaking up the band means SHA can never be the same.
They’re auditioning for a new landscaper/gardening guru through a public casting call which is cool and everything, but it’s like the Beatles replacing George Harrison through Facebook.
Who can step in and pull “Winty” in line? Any newbie has big boots to fill.
Maybe they’ll strike gold in the search find someone who fits in perfectly – they might locate an Adam Lambert or a Brian Johnson, who can keep the show going forward and add their own touch, not a JD Fortune or a Ciarin Gribbin and the thing goes to seed.
Anyway, next time you’re in the garden, pour one out (maybe some Seasol liquid fertiliser), for Charlie “Charles” Albone.
Gone (to Channel 7), but never forgotten.