BUYING BLIND ★★
Series premiere, Tuesday 7.30pm, Nine

With The Block and now Seven's House Rules drawing the crowds with tears and tantrums over the grouting, it's hard to imagine a time when reality, renovation and real estate were separate television entities. Yes, in the 1990s, Changing Rooms gloried in friends enforcing their bad taste on each other. But it wasn't until Nine relaunched The Block in 2010 that the merging of meltdowns with kitchen fit-outs and nerve-wracking auctions really took off. For jazz singer turned interior design guru, Shaynna Blaze, who had cut her teeth on Foxtel's contrastingly staid Selling Houses Australia just two years earlier, it marked a turning point in her career and in the industry. Now, for the first time, Blaze takes top billing with Nine's Buying Blind, a UK format in which six couples entrust experts to purchase and renovate their future home.

It's a pretty extreme premise, and it's not just for show. After delivering their wish lists to Blaze, buyer's agent Rich Harvey and builder, Marshal Keen, the couples sign over their powers of attorney, and don't see where their money has gone until they move in.

The couples' circumstances might be different (kids, no kids, first-home buyers, second-home buyers, families accommodating an elderly parent), and the locations are split between Sydney and Melbourne, but all are frustrated with the market.

"They're not able to look at compromise properly," Blaze says. "If you always have to compromise, you feel like you're missing out on everything, instead of looking at parts that you can build on. If you're not emotionally attached, compromise is much easier."