Latest news with #BillionDollarPlayground
Irish Independent
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Eilis O'Hanlon on Billion Dollar Playground: ‘Rarely has there been a more vivid example of what Marx and Engels were on about'
Spare a thought for People Before Profit. They've spent years trying to get the masses to rise up against capitalism, and all to no avail. If only they had realised the best way to do it is not to deliver sleep-inducing speeches about the iniquities of the class system, but to make everybody watch BBC Three's new reality show Billion Dollar Playground (BBC Three, Monday, 9pm) instead.
Spectator
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
How to holiday White Lotus-style: Billionaire Playground reviewed
Today's television is notably fond of presenting us with very rich people to both despise and wish we lived like. As well as high-end dramas like Succession and The White Lotus (a programme that's caused a huge rise in bookings for the resorts where its characters' dreadfulness is filmed), there are any number of documentaries in which the bling's the thing. Netflix, for example, has a genre called 'Lavish Reality Lifestyles' that consists of 38 different shows. In a mildly cunning twist, Billion Dollar Playground makes some of the staff who wait on the wealthy a kind of audience surrogate: mixing enthusiastic wonder at all that money can bring with beady-eyed disdain for the sense of entitlement displayed by those it brings it to. The staff in question work for an Australian company that specialises in providing large houses and servants for people wanting a break from their everyday lives of large houses and servants. In this week's two episodes, the setting was an undeniably luxurious villa in Sydney, where the fawning over the guests began before the guests arrived. First, head concierge Salvatore oversaw the preparation of the house, taking a particularly stern line on slightly misaligned dining chairs. The staff then took advance delivery of the luggage, which the guests, naturally, had neither packed nor were going to unpack themselves. In their defence, mind you, there was a lot of it. The seven women who'd hired the villa (aka 'the ladies') each had ten dresses and 12 pairs of shoes for their two-day stay. Meanwhile, another thing being got ready was the suspiciously neat soap-opera subplot: an inter-concierge power struggle between Salvatore and his two assistants – the sassy Heaven, who didn't like it when her boss was bossy, and goody-goody Jasmin whose distaste for Heaven's 'lack of respect' led to much mutual glaring. Eventually the ladies showed up and soon got down to what was required of them, objecting to caviar being served with salmon and complaining that a towel was 'too smooth'. Now all we needed was a spot of jeopardy, which the programme did its breathless best to inject. Would Heaven get the ladies on time to Sydney's Luna theme park which had been laid aside for their exclusive use as a dessert venue? Would she be able to meet their sudden demand for a fire-dancer and seven belly-dancing skirts? (For the record, the answers were 'yes' and 'yes'.) So what precisely is the point of Billion Dollar Playground? As ever, Heaven came to the rescue by supplying the answer. For all the contrived plotting, the programme's main job is clearly to have the same effect on us as her job has on Heaven. 'I love being able to live vicariously through the guests!' she declared, representing the audience once again. The Trouble with Mr Doodle was a curious tale, efficiently, if somewhat incuriously, told. As a boy, Sam Cox would spend 15 hours a day drawing. As a young man, he adopted the persona of Mr Doodle for Instagram videos of himself in increasingly spectacular doodling action. He also created an entire mythology of Mr Doodle's struggle to create 'Doodleworld' on earth. His admittedly pretty nifty scribbles were then spotted by a Hong Kong art dealer and his large-scale works began selling for up to a million dollars. The money allowed him to realise his life-long dream of buying a mansion and having it stripped out and painted white so that he could cover every square inch inside and out with, as you might imagine, doodles. Understandably, this already seemed to his parents and unexpected girlfriend Alena (all of whom appeared here, along with the man himself) a touch monomaniacal. But it turned into full-blown psychosis in 2022 when Sam Cox disappeared and a hallucinating Mr D. took over completely. Sectioned under the Mental Health Act, he was put in a cell where, deprived of drawing equipment, he doodled on the walls with tomato soup. At this stage, a happy ending didn't seem likely. Yet that's what the programme now brought us. Having slowly got better, Sam toyed with killing off Mr Doodle but, realising he couldn't live without him, returned to finish decorating the house and to marry the preternaturally patient Alena. After explaining his 'psychotic episode' online, he also received much restorative sympathy from his Instagram followers. Of course, you could see why the programme chose to take everybody's word that Sam/Mr Doodle is fully recovered, if only out of good manners. Nonetheless, the decision to do so meant that several questions were left unanswered – and indeed unasked. Doesn't Alena find their (let's just say) odd-looking home a little oppressive? Has Sam Cox genuinely made his peace with Mr Doodle – and, if so, how? Above all, are the programme-makers really so sure that everything's now fine?
The Guardian
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Billion Dollar Playground review – drop everything! Your hate-watch of the summer is here
Who among us, as the summer months and dreams of sun and cloudless skies begin and the visions of holidays and freedom take on solid form, does not think: where oh where is my hate-watch of the season? Well, fear not, mes chéris – the wait is over! Billion Dollar Playground has arrived and it is a feast for all. Imagine that The White Lotus's characters were real, but worse, and that none of them – increasingly unbelievably – ended up murdered. One reprobate complains that the bath towels in their luxury beachfront rental in Sydney are 'too smooth'. Another derides the chef for putting smoked salmon in her caviar and asks: 'Is that the same truffle as yesterday? Then definitely not.' Mo' canapes, mo' problems. That has got your glands juicing, hasn't it? Feel that vitriol start to pump! Remember what it feels like to be truly alive! And I have barely started. Because, unlike at The White Lotus, below stairs isn't much better. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning. Alex and Tom are an Australian husband-and-wife team who own Luxico, a company that manages A$1bn-worth (£480m-worth) of wildly opulent properties for wildly rich people who rent them out to other wildly rich people while, presumably, the owners are staying at one of their other wildly opulent properties. We do not warm to Alex and Tom ('Pressure makes diamonds – and rich people love diamonds!' he says of the efforts his minions must make to serve the wealthy guests), but they are not around enough to hate, so save your energy. We have much to be getting on with. The team whose job it is to prepare the house before a group of self-made millionaires arrive for a girls' weekend is headed by the chief concierge, Salvatore. He can spot a misaligned chair or a rucked rug at 50 paces and needs everyone to follow orders – and a minutely detailed timetable – at all times so the endeavour doesn't collapse into a heap of dust and rouse the ire of the vile, whining people ('I thought the beach was private?') they are gathered to serve. Unfortunately, one of his team members is Heaven. She loves to be around money and doesn't see why she should be 'disrespected' by being required to follow instructions. She sets up great events for the guests – such as getting them exclusive access to the amusement park Luna Park, so it can serve as the backdrop to dessert for their first meal – but doesn't follow through on details, such as bringing crockery and cutlery. Everyone else must abandon their jobs to save the guests' night (and Heaven's backside). Of course, she is endlessly grateful for this. Just kidding. She takes responsibility for nothing and is a piece of work. Her life plan seems to involve finding a sugar daddy then 'being able to afford Salvatore' herself. Smashing. Elsie is the housekeeper. She has a robust attitude to the job. When confronted with the problem of four bottles of Dom Pérignon missing from a guest's luggage, she suggests serving whatever the house already holds. 'They won't be able to tell the fucking difference.' We warm to Elsie. Jay is the maintenance man and driver. He is all teeth and abs. He has a second job as a cover model for spicy romance novels. No, really. He enjoys his life. Matt and George are handsome brothers and chefs. They enjoy their lives, too, and are sanguine about being wheeled out to distract guests with their hotness any time disaster looms. Especially Matt. Nicole is a trainee concierge, keen to do well, but, one suspects, on a collision course to either Jay's or Matt's bed – she just has to decide whether she wants a blinding grin or a nice meal afterwards. Jasmine is the new deputy concierge, rapidly promoted to chief when Salvatore – goaded by Heaven's inability to understand that she is not the centre of the universe – leaves abruptly. This makes him almost as bad as Heaven in my book, but no one is listening to me. JB is the butler. He fancied being the chief concierge himself. By the end of the first two episodes, he is showing signs of being a Gallic Machiavelli. He is also the chief cocktail supplier and a backup hottie to the chefs. The guests? I have spent enough time and words on them already. I wish them nothing but repeat truffles, smooth towels, salmony caviar and painful ends. In short, it's a winner. Your new escapist watch is here. Next week, it's tech bros. Enjoy. Billion Dollar Playground airs on BBC three and is available on BBC iPlayer
Times
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Billion Dollar Playground review — peek into rich lives feels far too confected
Do you disagree that life is short? Do you therefore wish to fritter away hours of your existence on confected tension and overhyped first world problems set to a 'luxe' aesthetic? Then I have just the show for you! Billion Dollar Playground (BBC3) is an attempt to ride on the coat-tails of Selling Sunset and wealth porn TV generally, though it is set in Sydney, Australia, not Los Angeles. And it is not about buying property but a high-end holiday rental company and its 'elite service' staff whose response to their rich, often very brattish guests staying at $40 million mansions is never, ever 'no', even when those clients demand a fire-eater at short notice. And, yes, it's strangely moreish if completely unconvincing. 'Structured reality' is, if you ask me, usually code for 'contrived and fabricated tosh which is a bit of an insult to one's intelligence'. It is 'fictual' rather than 'factual'. So many of the spats between the workers here seem obviously scripted. Some of the one percenters' pickiness ('the bath towel is too smooth!') seem clearly for the benefit of the camera, possibly involving several retakes. Why not just make a drama on the subject and be done with it? Well, I suppose The White Lotus has already done that rather well. So here is its clunky offshoot, a group of (attractive, obviously) young people with perfect teeth whose job is to pander to the whims of holiday guests who have everything but who would complain about the sheen on an angel's wings. This, actually, is a good idea. Being appalled watching people sending back their caviar to slaving personal chefs just because they can, and showing us that being obscenely wealthy doesn't necessarily make people happy, is one of the few consolations of being a pleb. Enjoy. Call me catty (plenty have) but I certainly enjoyed the fact that a group of super-rich middle-aged women arrived with groaning Louis Vuitton suitcases for one weekend and there wasn't a nice frock in them. They looked like they'd raided the Matalan sale rail. But the artifice here is just too obvious. Isn't the entire point of high-end service elegant, classy discretion from the staff? This lot spend so much time bitching behind the scenes, I wouldn't come here if I were a yacht/PJ owner (that's 'private jet' to peasants). The part in which one woman brought along her dog when pets aren't allowed looked so rehearsed I laughed out loud (she eventually agreed to pay $1,000 for steam cleaning. Expensive weekend). It reminds me a little of last year's atrocious Buying London, Netflix's series about ghastly estate agents selling 'super prime' property in the capital to high rollers, which felt to me to be totally contrived. Just as in that series, here we have two beautiful female members of staff, Heaven and Jasmin, pitted against each other. The male boss, the head concierge Salvatore, found fault with everything Heaven did while, as far as I could see, doing very little himself. Cut to him flouncing out unprofessionally in episode two in a way that I can't think anyone trained at the Savoy would do. Not a moment of this feels authentic. But if you're willing to suspend your disbelief you can at least savour the realisation that being rich and working with the rich isn't all it's cracked up to be. ★★☆☆☆
The Herald Scotland
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Billion Dollar Playground: Will you be coming out to play?
*** KNOW your Louis Vuitton from your Bric's ? Adore a temperamental chef? Enjoy watching rich people behaving badly? Then you, my friend, are likely a veteran of the reality show Below Deck, and therefore the target audience of new arrival Billion Dollar Playground. Lucky you. Below Deck, with Kenny Rogers-lookalike Captain Lee and no-nonsense chief stew Kate, was set on a luxury charter yacht. Every week it cast off with a new batch of guests, but the crew stayed the same. Wildly differing personalities thrown together by circumstance, they bickered, bonded, got bladdered, and occasionally did something else beginning with 'b'. Think Upstairs Downstairs in deck shoes. One of the earliest streaming hits, you can still watch Below Deck for free on Channel 4. Billion Dollar Playground, set in an Australian luxury lets business, updates the idea. 'Our guests are the world's elite,' said Tom, one of the owners. The first let was an apartment in Rose Bay, Sydney Harbour, where a crack team was waiting to serve. In true Apprentice style they introduced/hanged themselves. 'I've had to be a best friend, the servant, and a downright slave,' said lead concierge Salvatore, not at all dramatically. His deputy, named Heaven, said her superpower was making guests' dreams come true. Hard as the team were working to get the place spotless, there was a distinct whiff of something in the air and it wasn't bleach. The clients, a group of business women, arrived and immediately began demanding their money's worth. The team were delighted to oblige in the spare moments between gossip sessions, with the Salvatore and Heaven clash top of the bill. 'I think Salvatore has had a go at Heaven,' said trainee concierge Nicole. 'Why?' said Elsie the chambermaid. 'I don't know why.' said Nicole. Elsie tried again. 'What for?' 'I don't know what for,' said Nicole. If you can stand an hour of this verbal jousting you'll feel right at home in the Billion Dollar Playground club. In the kitchen were George and Matt, brothers and chefs. They were already looking frazzled one episode in, having been asked to whip up extra canapes before dinner. I wouldn't fancy their chances in a below-deck kitchen. Trying to play it cool was JB, the French butler. Australian standards of hospitality were a 'little more laid back', he said. JB lost his cool in the Mystery of the Missing Dom, a fraught little episode involving a guest asking for the Champagne she had brought. It was in the boot of the car, but running around like headless chickens meant no one on the staff clocked it. A quick trip to the shops to buy replacements and the panic was over. More crises followed as a matter of course. Dog-gate, Bowl-gate, Missing Dessert Spoons-Gate, Salvatore and Heaven hissing at each other, living in the lap of luxury was hardly stress-free. No prices were given in the first episode so who knows how much it all cost, apart from your precious time. Another glass of Dom, anyone?
